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Last of the Breed


Lee Knight

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In response to the challenge:

 

Last of the Breed

 

 

 

protagonist is a wounded and dying buffalo on the plain running for its life, breathing it's last breaths through bloody foam and fear. Symbolically about an artist trying to scratch out a living.

 

Or not. Here's my way too one dimensional 1st draft. Ideas? Oh... and of course the hunter is soon to be "The Last of the Breed" as well. I could work that in? Uh, it's been a while.

 

 

Bison in such numbers

They could drink a river dry

Dakota plain would tremble when they flew by

"Sacred spirit

You know the reason why

I will survive… and you must die”

 

She’s the last of the breed

She’s the end of the line

Running out of reasons to be

She’s the last of the breed

She’s out of time

But she will not be brought down to her knees

Cause she’s the last of the breed

 

Racing through the grassland

Running for her life

Nearing the end of an overgrown trail

She looks to the horizon

Blinded by the sun

Bloody arrow dancing (dangling?) as she struggles to inhale

 

She’s the last of the breed

She’s the end of the line

Running out of reasons to be

She’s the last of the breed

And out of time

She will not be brought down to her knees

Cause she’s the last of the breed

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I can see where you are trying to go with this, but it's not saying much yet.

When I read your intent yesterday, I thought, 'Good idea, and nice visceral sample words':

 

dying buffalo on the plain

running for its life,

breathing it's last breaths

through bloody foam and fear.

 

Your 1st draft has lost the visceral, and as you say, it's one dimensional with no symbolism yet.

'The Last of the Breed' is a good title, but given that the buffalo did disappear, is there any way you can inject hope into the song for people who are the last of their breed?

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I can see where you are trying to go with this, but it's not saying much yet.

When I read your intent yesterday, I thought, 'Good idea, and nice visceral sample words':

 

dying buffalo on the plain

running for its life,

breathing it's last breaths

through bloody foam and fear.

 

Your 1st draft has lost the visceral, and as you say, it's one dimensional with no symbolism yet.

'The Last of the Breed' is a good title, but given that the buffalo did disappear, is there any way you can inject hope into the song for people who are the last of their breed?

 

Great stuff ^^

 

Hope? Yeah... kicking ass is hope. Rejecting even the inevitable, down to the very last second. That's hope. Or at least passion and courage. Even if the outcome is demise. Go down like Joan of Arc flipping the bird at the grillmaster.

 

That's good food for thought there Mr. Phil. Thanks.

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I like the feel of this. It has a lot of potential.

 

The only thing that stuck out for me was the "arrow" reference. It was the rich white hunting parties from the East that decimated the bison herds, not the Native Americans.

 

But other than that, and with a few of Phil's ideas, you're well on your way.

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Thanks. And...

 

 

 

I'm not interested in a who's at fault as much as the dicodomy of the hunter and prey, then the hunter ultimately becoming the prey. Survival, respect for your prey, etc.

 

 

 

I've got a ways to go for sure.

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Lee Knight!

 

This is a great start. I agree with what's already been said, especially about the arrow. I can see how that might not factor into the scope of what you're trying to say, but I think there is a great opportunity there.

 

This might be stuff you already know so I'll try and keep this brief, but I really do enjoy history so I might get a little long winded. Feel free to ignore, or not.

 

Tribes had whole civilizations built around horses and hunting buffalo. They took what they needed to keep themselves going and that was it. The joy was in the hunt. Stories were told over and over about the hunt... riding up on a horse with a bow and arrow or lance and taking down a 2000 lb animal at a full gallop takes a special kind of balls. No one in the tribe went hungry. Everyone ate, and the successful hunters were praised. IMO, It's the most successful example of "communism" the world has seen.

 

I wouldn't call the hunters who decimated the herds "white men," because that's not necessarily historically accurate. (Native Americans alone sold 100,000 pelts to the American Fur Company in the middle 1840s.) They were a rough lot that were willing to kill on a very large scale. They could sit on top of a hill 500-1000 yards away and kill one after the other without spooking the whole herd. The typical gun that was used was a 55 caliber sharps rifle. They were single shot rifles that loaded from the breech. They were quicker to use then the muskets that came before them and could be loaded much more easily even while laying down which meant you could stay in a much more stable position while firing. Some did it just for the pelts which were worth $3.00. At the time an unskilled worker in the US would take home $1.00 a day. Some did it to feed the army or immigrants from all over the world working on the railroads. The decimation was the result of unchecked capitalism.

 

When you said this was going to be a metaphor for an artist trying to scratch out a living, it made me think of the two different approaches. There is the more primitive, let's call it pure, or art for art sake (though I'm not even sure I agree with that) It is not as commercially successful but if done right it can provide what is necessary for an artist to create. It might require working a "real job" for money. That "real job" combined with everything else life has to offer can be enough to "kill" the artist. The other way is full on commercialization/unchecked capitalism, which can be another good way to "kill" the artist.

 

Oh and Buffalo Skinners by Woody Guthrie?

 

 

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Tribes had whole civilizations built around horses and hunting buffalo. They took what they needed to keep themselves going and that was it. The joy was in the hunt. Stories were told over and over about the hunt... riding up on a horse with a bow and arrow or lance and taking down a 2000 lb animal at a full gallop takes a special kind of balls. No one in the tribe went hungry. Everyone ate, and the successful hunters were praised. IMO, It's the most successful example of "communism" the world has seen.

 

I'm going off topic here (way off), but this is very interesting to me. That's because there's this prevalent myth in animal science which says that all social animals form hierarchies based on who's most dominant. And that there's a clear evolutionary arc, running from the lowest forms of life to the highest. And they all form hierarchies based on who's most dominant, except in some dominance hierarchies A is dominant over B and B is dominant over C, but C is dominant over A, and in some groups -- like wolf packs -- whoever has possession of a prized object (like a bone) is allowed to keep it, making an omega dominant over the alpha, at least at that specific moment in time.

 

So of course we know that, yes, humans form dominance hierarchies of one type or another. The family unit, the military, the school system, and on and on. But what isn't as well known is that still scattered around the world there are small pockets of indigenous, hunter-gatherer societies. And there is no dominance hierarchy in any of these groups. In fact, if anyone tries to dominate another member of the group, he's ostracized.

 

It also turns out that human beings didn't start forming dominance hierarchies until after we settled down and developed agriculture. So while, biologically speaking, there may be an evolutionary arc, of simpler life forms evolving into higher ones, there's a huge gap between so-called dominance hierarchies in animals and the dominance hierarchies we find in modern human social groups and societies.

 

Native American tribes seem to lie somewhere in the middle. They're not egalitarian -- there's usually a chief who more-or-less runs things -- but there is an egalitarian quality to each member of the tribe making his place in the group through his hunting abilities, etc.

 

Of course this has nothing to do with Lee's song, but I find it all very interesting (especially this late at night)...

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Fascinating stuff. I wonder if agriculture led to the change or the change led to agriculture. Maybe it was some combination of both? Either way it makes sense. All of a sudden people are staying in one place. They have the ability to store stuff for long periods of time and more stuff to store. One of the big draws to the new world was no limits on the amount of game you could take. In Europe nobility owned the land and therefore the animals on it and were not willing to share because of the scarcity of resources.

 

On the plains, tribes that hunted buffalo (maybe this has something to do with Lee's song... probably not) did have Chiefs, but their method of selection was not based on heredity. It was based on merit and wealth. Wealth was directly tied to how many horses you owned. A Chief would advise the Elders and then the Elders would make the decision. If the Chief was charismatic enough and could convince the rest of the tribe to do whatever he said, then the Elders were more likely to go along with whatever he said.

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On the plains, tribes that hunted buffalo ... did have Chiefs, but their method of selection was not based on heredity. It was based on merit and wealth. Wealth was directly tied to how many horses you owned. A Chief would advise the Elders and then the Elders would make the decision. If the Chief was charismatic enough and could convince the rest of the tribe to do whatever he said, then the Elders were more likely to go along with whatever he said.

 

Very interesting...

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Empire of the Summer Moon is one of the best books I've ever read on this type of thing.

 

https://books.google.com/books/about/Empire_of_the_Summer_Moon.html?id=m6VWBwMAox4C&source=kp_cover&hl=en

 

It tells the story of Quanah Parker, the last Comanche war chief. His mother was of European decent, captured as a slave when she was a little girl, and became a member of the tribe. When rescued many years later, she tried to get back to the tribe because that was her family and she preferred that way of life. In the process of telling this story you end up learning a lot about the plains culture.

 

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All this interesting discussion aside, I think the lyric is working pretty well as is. I was trying to give a bunch of info if you wanted to get more specific, but I don't know that it needs it. You could even cut the 1st verse with the reference to Bison and I think the rest could stand on its own.

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It was based on merit and wealth. Wealth was directly tied to how many horses you owned. A Chief would advise the Elders and then the Elders would make the decision. If the Chief was charismatic enough and could convince the rest of the tribe to do whatever he said, then the Elders were more likely to go along with whatever he said.

 

Sounds like not much has changed in American politics. Aaaah Mr.Trump you are president of hundreds of companies and have such fabulous hair………...:philpalm:

 

 

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