Peaceful Cumemea Poem by Kimberly Burnham

Cumemea contains
a tired heart
or heart cume
tiredness meya

Cumemea peaceful
in the native Timucua
peaceful hunters and fishermen
in Florida and Georgia
since 3000 BCE

200,000 Timucuans at first contact
European sickness
left them with 50,000 by 1595
the years were not kind
by 1700 population dwindled to 1000

There was not Cumemea with English colonists
completing their extinction
at the turn of the 19th century

Now all that remains are words
Cumemea peaceful
left holding a tired heart