june tabor
joseph cross
There's word from the caf? 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  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"  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'."  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