Appeal to the Lumbee
Lynn Veach Sadler

Why are you the Drowning Creek
before the Lumber River?
Is "Drowning Creek" prophetic?

Who found refuge by you before
the Cheraw, Hatteras, the Tuscarora?
For you are pre-Columbian.
Your peoples date from at least
the end of the last Ice Age.
If you will but speak,
so much drowned would
come to life again.

Native Americans know you as the Lumbee.
Whites call you the Lumber.
Did they float timber down you
on its way to sea?
Did the Lost Colonists find their way
along you?

Tell us the history of your people—
the People of the Lumbee River.
You are their home.
You are where they have come from.
Help their stories, rising up from you
like river mist,
to flow with tears of history,
watering with worth.
Open our ears to hear it,
our eyes to see it,
our hearts to know its truth.

The Lumbees were your people
before they were a people.
Their history at best
is half-submerged,
at worst is drowned.

You are the Drowning Creek
before the Lumber River.
We hear Lumbee in that Lumber.
We need more.
Oh, Lumbee, limn with water!
Reflect us in your pools.
How many more Lumbees must drown
in your swirling waters
before you save our history,
give up the secrets of those drowned!
We are Indians buried in
a watery grave!

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