There's word from the café
that the old mans ailin'
His eyes are pailin'
and the weather took his hands
They say the ring on his finger
was shaped from a bone
from some white man in Missouri
that spilled whiskey on his wife
[chorus]
He has traveled in a sacred circle
and 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
and he was raised by the mission
Just one of a hundred Indian boys
that 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."
[repeat chorus]
In the 1919
chill of December
the bear and the rattler
coil sleepin' hardly breathin'
It's a penny to the kitchen boy
to run get sister Lydia
"Now you tell her that old Indian
is sleepin', hardly breathin'."
[repeat chorus]
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
and no one said a thing about his chest
where it looked like a bear had ripped him
and a rattler kissed his cheek.
[repeat chorus]
Because . . . [repeat second verse]