Magpie - Yellow Metal lyrics

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 k**ed 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 k** these gentle people it k**ed 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