A Forest Tribe

I don’t know if it was
                Caddoes or Comanches
                who walked these woods,
                who haunted the bends
                of Fawn’s Creek;
 
Or, perhaps some other tribe;
                a forest tribe maybe;
There are traces of a people
                everywhere;
                arrowheads, in bunches
                beneath the sandy surface
                of the earth;
                and spearheads, too.
 
There are shards of broken pottery--
                perhaps ancient,
There is a sense of secret travels
                through these woods,
                along the rivulets and creeks,
                or down the fading paths of the deer.

Legends abound about the Caddoes or Comanches or Karankawa tribes inhabiting the Piney Woods.  It is easy to see where forest tribes could have lived very well in these forests.  Of course, the forests we see today are secondary forests. When the logging companies moved in during the late 1800s and early 1900s, the pine trees werenearly as big as the trees of the redwoods.  There are pictures of them with men standing next to the trunks that were as big around as a carousel and several stories high.  None of those trees are left.  They were all cut down. Every one.