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9-12 -- Alternative Geography Assessment Samples Home, Sweet Home? Below are the lyrics to two songs, Western Home and Dakota Land, that were written about the same place during the same time period. Analyze the lyrics and in the space below, answer the following questions: 1. What is the time period to which the songs are referring? 2. Where is the place to which the songs are referring? 3. In what ways do the songwriters’ environmental perceptions differ? 4. What factors may explain these differences? WESTERN HOME Refrain: A home! A home! Where the deer and the antelope play; Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, And the sky is not cloudy all day. 1. Oh! give me a home where the buffalo roam Where the deer and the antelope play; Where never is heard a discouraging word, And the sky is not cloudy all day. 2. Oh! give me land where the bright diamond sand Throws its light from the flittering streams, Where glideth along the graceful white swan, Like the maid of her heavenly dreams. 3. Oh! give me a gale of the Solomon vale Where the lifestreams with buoyancy flow; On the bank of the beaver, where seldom if ever Any poisonous herbage doth grow. 4. How often at night, when the heavens are bright With the light of the twinkling stars. Have I stood here amazed and asked as I gazed if their glory exceeds that of ours. 5. I love the wild flowers in the bright land of ours, I love the wild curlew’s shrill scream; The bluffs and white rocks and antelope flocks, That graze on the mountain so green. 6. The air is so pure and the breezes so free. The zephyrs so balmy and light. That I would not exchange my home here to range For ever in azures so bright. DAKOTA LAND Refrain: O Dakota Land, sweet Dakota land. As on the fiery soil I stand. I look across the plains. And wonder why it never rains, Til Gabriel blows his trumpet sound And says the rain’s just gone around. 1. We’ve reached the land of desert sweet, Where nothing grows for man to eat, The wind it blows with feverish heat Across the plains so hard to beat. 2. We’ve reached the land of hills and stones Where all is strewn with buffalo bones. O buffalo bones, bleached buffalo bones, I seem to hear your sighs and moans. 3. We have no wheat, we have no oats, We have no corn to feed our shoats; Our chickens are so very poor They beg for crumbs outside the door. 4. Our horses are of bronco race Starvation stares them in the face. We do not live, we only stay; We are too poor to get away. Level Four | Level Three | Level Two | Level One Level One Performance