O Land of lands! to thee we give
Our prayers, our hopes, our service free;
For thee thy sons shall nobly live,
And at thy need shall die for thee!
ON THE BIG HORN.
In the disastrous battle on the Big Horn River, in which General Custer
and his entire force were slain, the chief Rain-in-the-Face was one of
the fiercest leaders of the Indians. In Longfellow's poem on the
massacre, these lines will be remembered:--
"Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face,
"Revenge upon all the race
Of the White Chief with yellow hair!"
And the mountains dark and high
From their crags reechoed the cry
Of his anger and despair.
He is now a man of peace; and the agent at Standing Rock, Dakota,
writes, September 28, 1886: "Rain-in-the-Face is very anxious to go to
Hampton. I fear he is too old, but he desires very much to go." The
Southern Workman, the organ of General Armstrong's Industrial School at
Hampton, Va., says in a late number:--
"Rain-in-the-Face has applied before to come to Hampton, but his age
would exclude him from the school as an ordinary student. He has shown
himself very much in earnest about it, and is anxious, all say, to learn
the better ways of life. It is as unusual as it is striking to see a man
of his age, and one who has had such an experience, willing to give up
the old way, and put himself in the position of a boy and a student."
THE years are but half a score,
And the war-whoop sounds no more
With the blast of bugles, where
Straight into a slaughter pen,
With his doomed three hundred men,
Rode the chief with the yellow hair.
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