Текст пісні
Joseph Cross
Word came from the café
That the old man was ailin'
His eyes were palin'
And the weather took his hands
They say the ring on his finger
Was carved from a bone
From some white man in Missouri
Who spilled whiskey on his wife
He has traveled in a sacred circle
He has traveled on a white man's train
He's killed for hunger his buffalo brother
He's killed for anger and a white man's name
His name was Joseph Cross
He was raised on the mission
Just one of a hundred Indian boys
Who wouldn't tie his shoes
He cried the night his grandpa died
And told him in a vision
Stay close to the ways of the rattlesnake
Stay close to the ways of the grizzly.
He has traveled in a sacred circle
He has traveled on a white man's train
He's killed for hunger his buffalo brother
He's killed for anger and a white man's name
In the 1919
Chill of December
The bear and the rattler
Lie coiled sleepin' hardly breathin'
It's a penny for the kitchen boy
To run get sister Lydia
Now you tell her that old Indian
Is sleepin', hardly breathin'.
He has traveled in a sacred circle
He has traveled on a white man's train
He's killed for hunger his buffalo brother
He's killed for anger and a white man's name
Someone said it just weren't right
To give him a white man's funeral.
Someone said they'd just as soon as not
Float him on down the river
But no one touched the ring
Or said a thing about his chest
Where it looked like a bear had ripped him
And a rattler kissed his cheek.
He has traveled in a sacred circle
He has traveled on a white man's train
He's killed for hunger his buffalo brother
He's killed for anger and a white man's name