"Fight No More Forever"
lyrics by Kinny Landrum

My father's father's father said in 1805
Some white men came into our land, barely alive
We fed them and their horses
Gave them canoes made of bark
To continue on their journey
They called themselves Lewis and Clark
Though we never saw them again
We thought they were our friends

And we would fight no more forever
We would live in peace together
The Nez PercÈ and whites would always give
Each other room to live
And we would fight no more forever

Now I am chief, they call me Joseph
But that's a white man's name
For many moons we lived in peace
But now things aren't the same
They stole our cattle, discovered gold
And want to take our lands
Some braves decided to take revenge
Now there's blood on our hands
The only course that I can see
Is it's time for us to flee

So we can fight no more forever
We can live in peace together
If we can get to Canada, they say
No one will follow us that way
And we will fight no more forever

So I took our tribe across the Bitterroot Mountains
Into the land where the buffalo roam
We fought the Blue Coats at the Big Hole River
By now we knew that we could never go home

We kept on going past the Yellowstone Canyon
Bear Coat Miles and One-Armed Howard behind
But they surrounded us in the Bear Paw Mountains
With only forty miles of mountain to climb

Tell General Howard I know his heart
My own is sick and sad
My chiefs are dead, my children are freezing
We ate up all we had
Some of my people ran off in the hills
You may find them among the dead
Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired
There's just one thing to be said
They have taken away our lands
But from where the sun now stands

I will fight no more forever
We will go in peace together
Though we were once a mighty nation
We will go to the reservation
And we will fight no more forever
We will fight no more forever
We will fight no more...... forever

music and lyrics by Kinny Landrum
© 1995 by Kinny Landrum and Electron Farm Publications