Yellow Metal

Come gather round me friends and listen to my song
I’ll tell you of a venture that went so very wrong
In a land full of strange beauty that I did not know well
The horrors that I saw there no human tongue can tell

Oh, I was young and foolish, this world I did not know
Ambition and adventure did beckon me to go
I left my home and went with men I thought were brave and bold
To a land where they said that all the rivers ran with gold

So we traveled up that river our fortunes for to find
To a land so pure and wild, never farmed nor mined
And many days we labored with our shovels and our pans
Until that precious yellow metal filled up all our hands

It was then we saw the Indians come paddling down the stream
They saw what we were doing and they all began to scream
In a strange and foreign tongue we couldn’t understand
But it was clear they wanted us to be gone from their land

And so we fell upon them with our shovels, picks, and knives
The river it ran red with blood as we took their lives
Then we went into their village with our knives and guns
And there we murdered many mothers, daughters, and sons

As if it wasn’t bad enough, these things we did before
The sicknesses we brought to them killed many hundreds more
And when it was all over and we counted up the dead
They numbered over two thousand, and in shame I hung my head

Now every day I fall down to my knees and hide my face
My salty tears fall mingling with the blood that’s in this place
The shimmer of the gold blinded my heart, I could not see
To kill these gentle people it killed the soul in me

Now, the story that I’ve told to you is true and this I know
And you might think it happened a long, long time ago
Today it’s hard to fathom such cold barbarity
But I tell you, friends, it happened in nineteen ninety-three