Hunted To Extinction Poem by Mary Champion

Long John's mission was hunting for bison
cos somebody, somewhere, once put a price on
every hide that he could deliver
to the trading post further up the river.
You couldn't miss it, you could see the spray
of the waterfall from miles away.
Led by a stroke of serendipity,
he'd left the darkness of the city
to make a new life under open skies,
way out West where the eagle flies.
Long John was not a greedy man,
a modest living was all he'd planned,
but behind the scenes, in Washington
informal plotting was going on.
A savage soul in a city suit,
with bulging gut and a slim cheroot,
had an utterly ruthless determination
to destroy the lives of the Indian nations.
American natives had followed the bison
for hundreds of years, and built their lives on
the herds that roamed on the grassy plains,
never taking more than could be sustained.
But the word went out that a man could make
a fortune if he'd just partake
in killing buffalo en-masse
while they were grazing on the grass.
Men like John, and their greedier kin,
came in hordes to take the skin
of the animal who had once sustained
the lives of the Indians of the plains.

With numbers culled to vanishing,
they had no choice but giving in,
and Native America's once proud nations
were forced to live on reservations.