The Ballad of the Choctaw-Apache

Well the east Texas wind
Goes whistlin' through the pines
And I followed it down to Lousianne
There is a tribe
And it ain't too hard to find
Where the rich man came
And flooded all the land

They had no mercy on
the people, old and young
They were blinded by
the silver on their tongues
All the land that they'd take
Just to build themselves a lake
Well it ain't worth all the lives
that they'd forsake

Well a hundred eighty thousand acres
of ancestral land
That Sabine River bottom
flooded by the dam
I am a proud Choctaw-Apache man
But it just don't mean a thing
To the faces in your hand

Back in 1963
The land of the proud
The brave, and free
But it ain't that way
For everyone, you see
They washed out the land
So be careful where you stand
Like a boulder falling on
A grain of sand

I hope that dirty reservoir
Was worth all of the lives you scarred
And the people you left hangin' out to dry
And lord knows they all tried
Their best to turn the tide
But there ain't no sense
In waitin' round to die

Well a hundred eighty thousand acres
of ancestral land
That Sabine River bottom
flooded by the dam
I am a proud Choctaw-Apache man
But it just don't mean a thing
To the faces in your hand

Well my granny was a native
From the Parish of Sabine
And she raised her children the best way she knew how.
They lived off the earth
Back before the times of dearth
They counted on the seed and the plow

But the crops they all drowned
In the water rushing down
Only 25 bucks an acre they were paid
Well you take away their home
And you claim what you don't own
Well I guess it's just the American way

Well a hundred eighty thousand acres
of ancestral land
That Sabine River bottom
flooded by the dam
I am a proud Choctaw-Apache man
But it just don't mean a thing
To the faces in your hand