The poet's March 1875 verses take up more than ninety printed pages with plenty of ink on most every page, twenty-five or so lines a page, six to eight words a line, and so on. "A Tale of the Indian Massacre at Pueblo, in 1854", a story-poem of roughly 400 lines, opens with this scene-setting description of 1875 Pueblo, where the poet lived ...
Pueblo, to-day, is pleasant and fair---
A city whose progress will fairly compare
With western cities everywhere :---
The vale of the Arkansas river so great,
Flowing grandly and swiftly through many a State,
Is the site of this city,---peaceful to-day,
'Though often the scene of bloodiest fray
In the earlier times, before the reigns
Of Peace and Progress beyond the "plains".
And the old-time men of the Arkansas vale
Tell many a strange and thrilling tale
Of these earlier days, when trapping was done,
Before Pike's Peak gold hunting begun ...
T. O. Bigney's "Tale ... " focuses on young lovers who are separated in a steamboat wreck on the Arkansas River "near a thousand miles from the 'Rockies' bold", who midst the 1854 Christmas massacre at El Pueblo, are reunited. Just before the attack, the poet sets the peaceful Christmas scene ...
At the plaza were more than a score of men,
Women and children, too,
Mostly Mexicans from the south---
Catholics good and true ;
So there were festal scenes that night
And many an ancient, sacred rite.
The massacre described ....
The murderous shriek of deadly balls ;
The "whoop", most drear and wild,
Of a hundred murderous, fiendish Utes ;
The screams of many a child,
And moans of women dying near,
Blent in one fearful wail of fear.
The fiends soon lighted fiery flames
Whose horrid, blasting glare
Revealed most desperate, bloody scenes
Around the plaza square ;
Scenes of massacres, and blood,
Now in pools, then in a flood.
The Mexicans fought desperately,
Though neither cool or skilled ;---
They were surprised, and still they fought
Until each man was killed ...
The poet's fictional lovers live to tell the tale. In 1859, the city of Pueblo is founded north of the Arkansas River, close to the ruins of El Pueblo trading post.
Poem of the Week
March 7, 2005
El Pueblo trading post.
Pueblo, Colorado
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