The Revenge Of Rain-In-The-Face

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
    And the menace of their wrath.

"Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face,
"Revenue upon all the race
    Of the White Chief with yellow hair!"
And the mountains dark and high
From their crags re-echoed the cry
    Of his anger and despair.

In the meadow, spreading wide
By woodland and riverside
    The Indian village stood;
All was silent as a dream,
Save the rushing a of the stream
    And the blue-jay in the wood.

In his war paint and his beads,
Like a bison among the reeds,
    In ambush the Sitting Bull
Lay with three thousand braves
Crouched in the clefts and caves,
Savage, unmerciful!

Into the fatal snare
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.

The sudden darkness of death
Overwhelmed them like the breath
    And smoke of a furnace fire:
By the river's bank, and between
The rocks of the ravine,
    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
The brave heart, that beat no more,
    Of the White Chief with yellow hair.

Whose was the right and the wrong?
Sing it, O funeral song,
    With a voice that is full of tears,
And say that our broken faith
Wrought all this ruin and scathe,
    In the Year of a Hundred Years.