Multiconstruct

Here is another poem from my chapbook “America: Tales of Atrocity and Near Escape”. He was another great American that no one has ever heard of. Greatly influenced by the Quakers in Pennsylvania he was a peace and freedom loving guy who left the Iroquois country for Ohio to start the Mingos. Mingos were a tribe of Indians from several different tribes who came together in a voluntary mutual association. Unfortunately the Whites had invaded the hunting lands of the Shawnee and others (Kentucky) and when the Shawnee struck a militia was formed for retaliation and they took it out on the peaceful Mingos. Again my thanks to Alan Eckhart for his great histories of the struggle for the Midwest.

Talgayeeta was the son of a chief

Of the people called the Cayuga

They were a warlike nation

In the Iroquois Confederation

But Talgayeeta had found a better way

When the French and British fought

He wouldn’t go to war

He made peace where ever he was able

All the peoples of the tribes

And the white folks too

Were all welcome to his table

Talgayeeta, son of Shikelelemus

Talgayeeta, called by some Logan

Talgayeeta, taught to be a man of peace

But were the whites gonna let him be?

He left his tribe to move to the West

The land from which the wind blows

He started a new tribe where everyone was chief

And they called themselves the Mingos

Now Mingo means chief

And each was their own

It was homegrown Anarchy

And peace that were sown

Talgayeeta, called by some Logan

Talgayeeta, left the Susquhana

Talgayeeta, strove to be a man of peace

Talgayeeta, but where the whites gonna let him be?

Talgayeeta was away on a hunt

When the Kentucky Militia arrived

Welcomed as friends they turned on their hosts

And not a Mingo in the village survived

When Talgayeeta returned from his hunt

And saw what the white men had done

He pulled out his hatchet and cried out for vengeance

And swore he would kill a dozen for one

Talgayeeta, buried his unborn nephew

Talgayeeta, buried his whole family

Talgayeeta, lived to be a man of peace

But the whites wouldn’t let him be.

So the man of peace picked up the sword

And he led off the Mingos to war

He took a dozen white scalps for each of his tribe

And kept to the vow that he swore

But the waging of war has terrible costs

He took to drinking to ease his pain

And he was drunk when the assassin shot him in the back

And we’ve never found his like again

Talgayeeta, son of Shikelelemus

Talgayeeta, called by some Logan

Talgayeeta, tried to be a man of peace

But the whites wouldn’t let him be.