The Revenge Of Rain-In-The-Face

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    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.