Mvskoke Trails: Footprints on the Piedmont

Lyrics

Before the loom's first clatter.
Before the engine's steam.
Before the shotgun shacks stood dreaming a worker's dream.
There was only the ridge, and the red clay below.

The Great Peachtree Trail was a thought in the earth,
the Sandtown Path, worn smooth by a people's worth.
A hunter's trace through hickory and deep-rooted oak,
carrying deerskin, carrying stories soft-spoken
on the autumn wind.
The streams cut through beds of quartz and chert.
This land was never empty, never inert.
It was listening.
It was waiting underfoot for the coming hurt.

And the soil remembers.
Oh, the ancient soil remembers.
Before the mill whistle, before the numbered street,
the quiet rhythm of a million moccasined feet.
The Mvskoke heart, a deep and steady beat.
The soil remembers.

Smoke from the wattle and daub rose in a thin prayer.
The women owned the fields, the mother's line was theirs.
Maize, and bean, and squash grew in the humid air,
held in the patient wisdom of their care.
A grandmother's story, passed down from her,
the center of their world, a sacred fire's constant stir.

And the soil remembers.
Yes, the deep soil remembers.
Before the mill whistle, before the numbered street,
the quiet rhythm of a million moccasined feet.
The Mvskoke heart, a deep and steady beat.
The soil remembers.

They called the game Ishtaboli.
Little brother of war.
A hundred men with sticks of hickory, settling a score
where Carroll Street would one day sleep.
The clash of bone, a violent ballet.
A life lived sharp, in a single day, and then swept away.
Now only the arrowheads sleep in the Cabbagetown clay.

The Sandtown Path is paved and gone.
But the ridge holds on, from dusk 'til dawn.
Mvskoke.
Mvskoke.
This red earth still remembers your name.