The Warrior’s Plume

On the plains and in the vales of Oklahoma,
     Grew a flower of the Tyrian hue,
The color that is loved by the Redman,
      That tells him light and life,
               And love are true.

Long ago it flamed in beauty on the prairies,
      Lighting reaching vistas with its glow;
Ere advent of the whiteman and his fences,
      Told the care-free, roving hunter
               He must go.

The throng, the herd, and greed have madly trampled
      Prairie, woodland, valley, and the height;
Crushed the feath’ry flower and rudely blighted
      Its pride and life and beauty,
              And its light.

Today ’tis found in silent glades and meadows
      Where by twos and threes it greets the May.
Like the scattered braves who loved its color,
      It has passed, been trodden out
               Along the way.

As the oriflamme it flaunted through past ages
      Went to gladden the fairness of the earth;
So the greatness of the Indian will linger
      In the land that loves them both
               And gave them birth.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on November 10, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“The Warrior’s Plume” appears in Bertrand N. O. Walker’s Yon-Doo-Shah-We-Ah (Nubbins) (Harlow, 1924).