Yellow Metal - Magpie

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