Worksheet # 2 Home Questions Puzzle Links Next
ARCTIC PEOPLES AND NATIVE AMERICANS
Now, from the start they did
hunt and did gather their food,
And Ôtwas catch-as-catch-can
in the primeval wood,
So these earliest Americans,
our Indian tribes,
Began fishing and farming
and living their libes,Éer, lives.
Keeping close kin with
nature, its rhythm, its reason,
These cultures did flourish
from season to season.
As setting foot in new
climes, they adapted their ways
To meet with the rigors of
their nights and their days.
Now some stayed in the North
to fish in the seas,
And eat all the seal and
whale and walrus you please.
They bed down on the tundra
in homes built from the snow,
And sighed, ÒIgloo, sweet
igloo,Ó did these Eskimo.
Who made dresses and coats
from thick animal skins
To keep warm when the chills
rolled in on the winds.
Husky dogs pulled their
sleds along the snow drifts,
While in kayaks they paddled to hunt and to fish.
And thanks were then given
for the food that they found,
As gameÕs often scarce where snow and ice abound.
So they would offer fine
gifts and sing songs of praise
To the souls of the
creatures who graced their meal trays.
Indeed, where polar
bears play and surf the ice
floes,
Where a reindeer does
rummage and a caribou goes,
Is the spot you might meet
(with a B-R-RRR in your bones)
The people who dwell in such
Arctic zones.
So if your heat goes out and cold gales do sweep,
Imagine an igloo as you drift to sleep.
And then maybe youÕll wake
and then maybe youÕll find
A blast from the north has
left a snow white behind.
But if ever youÕre lost in
those far frigid sections,
DonÕt call for an Eskimo to
give you directions.
Since thatÕs a name they got
before they knew it,
Eskimo theyÕre not, and so
please say, ÒInuitÓ.