WEBVTT

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Let's see.

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OK, I'll read a couple
more and that'll be it.

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This one is called
"Thanksgiving at Snake Butte."

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And Snake Butte is just below
the Fort Belknap agency,

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where my folks live.

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And one day my dad and
I were riding up there,

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and we came across some carvings
on these very large flat rocks.

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And on the carvings were--

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the carvings were fish and
lizards, and there was a snake.

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And there was even a guy on his
knee, shooting a bow and arrow.

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And so this was
quite significant.

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This went back to
the old days, when

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the Indians up on
the plains were

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chasing their herds of buffalo.

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They would camp on Snake
Butte, because it was easily

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defensible from three
sides and the only

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had to worry about the backside.

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And so it was about Thanksgiving
when we went up there,

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and I wrote this
poem about that.

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In time we rode that
trail up the Butte,

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just far as time would let us.

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The answer to our
time lay hidden

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in the long grasses on the top.

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Antelope scattered through
the rocks before us,

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clattered unseen down the
easy slope to the West.

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Our horses balked, stiff legged.

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Their nostrils flared at
something unseen, gliding

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smoothly through brush away.

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On top, our horses broke,
loped through a small stand

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of stunted pine, then
jolted to a nervous walk.

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Before us lay the smooth
stones of our ancestors.

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The fish, the lizard, snake
and bent-kneed bowman.

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Etched by something crude,
by a wandering race.

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Driven by their names for time.

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Its winds, it's rain, its
snow and the cold moon

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tugging at the crude figures in
this, the season of their loss.

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