June Tabor
June Tabor - Joseph Cross lyrics
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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]