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.