Chapter VI

The stern victors, too, are mourning Over their dauntless slain; Full twoscore of death-stilled heroes, Relieved of life’s care and pain, After the battle was over, Lone Wolf and good Pontgravé Were found in the grasp of each other, And were laid in one grave away. Then in the cut through the Narrows The slain were buried deep, And a requiem mass sung o’er them, And forever there they sleep. The Frenchmen then turned eastward, Over the wide lagoon, By the domes of busy muskrat And affrighted mallard and loon, And disappeared in the distance, By the eastern shore afar; While a truce for a space is given To exterminating war. But a hundred years of despoiling Ruined the Ojibways, And dwindled away the nation, And miserable grew their days. Their rights were all unregarded When the dominant white man came; Then the red man grew degenerate, And his sun went down in shame. To-day by the Narrows dreaming, No vestige or relic we trace Of the once proud Indian nation, Save their bones at the Carrying Place.[A] Uncovered by the storms of centuries, That drift the sands away, White and ghastly they are mouldering Remorselessly to decay. But beyond the northern marshlands, In regions far away, Wander two quaint, lonely relics, Poor Joe and Bill Chippewa. To-day, where the south winds murmur By Pelee’s lovely shores, I pause in sad meditation, And the mind in fancy soars Backward through time’s dim corridors; Dreamily thoughts will flow To the palmy days of the Ojibways Three hundred years ago.