| |
| IN that desolate land and lone | |
| Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone | |
| Roar down their mountain path, | |
| By their fires the Sioux chiefs | |
| Muttered their woes and griefs, | 5 |
| And the menace of their wrath. | |
| |
| “Revenge!” cried Rain-in-the-Face; | |
| “Revenge upon all the race | |
| Of the White Chief with yellow hair!” | |
| And the mountains dark and high | 10 |
| From their crags re-echoed the cry | |
| Of his anger and despair. | |
| |
| In the meadow, spreading wide | |
| By woodland and river-side | |
| The Indian village stood; | 15 |
| All was silent as a dream, | |
| Save the rushing of the stream | |
| And the blue-jay in the wood. | |
| |
| In his war-paint and his beads, | |
| Like a bison among the reeds, | 20 |
| In ambush the Sitting Bull | |
| Lay with three thousand braves | |
| Crouched in the clefts and caves, | |
| Savage, unmerciful! | |
| |
| Into the fatal snare | 25 |
| The White Chief with yellow hair, | |
| And his three hundred men, | |
| Dashed headlong, sword in hand; | |
| But of that gallant band | |
| Not one returned again. | 30 |
| |
| The sudden darkness of death | |
| Overwhelmed them, like the breath | |
| And smoke of a furnace of fire; | |
| By the river’s bank, and between | |
| The rocks of the ravine, | 35 |
| They lay in their bloody attire. | |
| |
| But the foemen fled in the night, | |
| And Rain-in-the-Face, in his flight, | |
| Uplifted high in air, | |
| As a ghastly trophy, bore | 40 |
| The brave heart that beat no more | |
| Of the White Chief with yellow hair. | |
| |
| Whose was the right and wrong? | |
| Sing it, O funeral song, | |
| With a voice that is full of tears, | 45 |
| And say that our broken faith | |
| Wrought all this ruin and scathe, | |
| In the Year of a Hundred Years! | |
| |
