French narratives of the 17th century mention this confederacy’s chief town as lying “several days southwest of the Loup nation,” which conjecture places near the Republican River in southern Nebraska. 

The inhabitants were said to subsist, in the main, on a concoction of ground-beans (stolen from the nests of field mice) and syrup cooked down from the sap of box elder trees. Their clothing was spun from milkweed down, which comprised the sole industry of the nation, save for the manufacture of willow-bark hammocks. Their habitations were described as “ephemeral webs” incapable of offering resistance either to the elements or to whims of interior design — which in particular horrified our anonymous, wistful French narrator.

The destruction and dispersal of this people occurred in about 1700. Survivors were enslaved by, and later intermarried with, the Pawnee, who were said to have developed a tradition of speculation, narcolepsy and insouciance, along with a penchant for cigars and for interpreting the shapes of clouds.

A native from Nebraska currently living in Stockholm, Sweden, S.C. Hahn’s work has recently appeared in the international prose poetry collection The House of Your Dream on White Pine Press, The Cortland Review, and The Richmond Review. His book, A Sky That Is Never the Same: prose poems, will be released on Monday, May 18th on Stray Dog Press.  There will be a release party and reading at Strand in Stockholm on Monday night.