Indian Burn

Neil's post, "Facing The Music" reminded me of "Indian Burn" from Kevin Gilbert's "Kaviar" record.

Now, I'm not one of those people who glamorizes the Native American as a bunch of peaceful hippies running around in the garden of Eden. Like any other race of people, there were good and bad. Peacful and warlike.

That doesn't mean they deserved genocide.


Indian Burn
by Kevin Gilbert

Me and my pals just got off that boat
Cause we didn't like the king
And we wanted to vote
And we're your new neighbors, and we're here to stay
We'd like to make nice in a neighborly way
I've got this idea we're gonna be friends
How soon? And how long? Well, that all depends
On how long it takes to obtain all we need
We got things to build, we got mouths to feed
So as long as you stay on your side of the street
We'll like all your people, we'll think that you're neat!

My wife, she wears makeup, she paints her face too!
Just not in that primitive way that you do
Pocohontas is cute, that Tonto's no fool
And them Mohawk haircuts, they're kinda cool
How 'bout that Geronimo, bold and bad!
And that teary-eyed guy on that pollution ad
And check out those eagles - hey, those are nice too
We'll make them our symbol in memory of you

Your heads can have hats, your feet can have shoes
We’ll just take this land you can’t possibly use
All savage and huge and covered with weeds
In exchange you can have all these colorful beads
We’ll sit Indian style give your peace pipe a toot
We’ll make firewater with your old rotting fruit
And oh we’re so pleased we can all get along
So just give us New York and we’ll sing you this song

You can show us how you worship the sun
We’ll show you the ways that we use this gun
You can show us the way that you worship the trees
We’ll give you some blankets all full of disease
You can tell us how you love to worship the sky
We’ll force you to worship our one big Mean Guy

Ten little, nine little, eight little Indians
Seven little, six little, five little Indians
Four little, three little, two little Indians
One little Indian
No little indians

Here’s your English lesson for today:
You say “How”
And we say “Hi”
Then we say “Jump”
And you say “How high?”
We say “Good day”
And you say “Goodbye”

So thanks for giving us our great new nation
With so little struggle without hesitation
Pull up a chair to our big celebration
So please go ahead to make your reservation
Relax Mr. Indian, don’t get uptight
It’s because we won’t rest till America’s white
We’d love to hang out and chat more with you braves
But we gotta go set up the South for the slaves

Indian burn

You can show us how you worship the sun
We’ll show you the ways that we use this gun
You can show how you love to worship the trees
We’ll give you some blankets all full of disease
You can tell us how you love to worship the sky
We’ll force you to worship our one big Mean Guy

Look Jeb
Look how excited they are
And who can blame them
They’re gonna be
Americans!