Thinking Outside of the Box (Way Outside of the Box)

I just received a copy of The Saukie Indians and Their Great Chiefs Black Hawk and Keokuk.  My copy is one of those print-on-demand books–the original was published in 1926, and was written by Amer Mills Stocking.  This is a book of poetry, and it tells the stories of Keokuk and Black Hawk.  What little I have read of it seems to be pretty accurate, or at least it agrees with other accounts. 

Here is part of it:

“The Black Hawk returned to his riverside cabin,

Where he lived throught the long, golden days of the summer.

The faithful Asshawequa saw he was failing,

And said:  ‘He is old.  Very soon he will leave us.

Sowana, the Great and Good Spirit, will call him.’

A party of Iowas came on a visit

To the place that they had once accounted their homeland

Ill feeling forgotten and all wrongs forgiven,

They held wiith the Black Hawk a council of friendship.

The spot where they met was north-west of his cabin

And there the old warrior directed his body,

When death should o’er take him be decently buried….”

I am pretty sure I don’t understand poetry.  Maybe this is really good, maybe it is really bad.