Touch the Earth


Graeme M
Hi all

I know I have in my Harper collection somewhere a piece written by an
Indian Chief talking about how the White Man behaves using laws and
religion to suit his purposes but only when it suits him. Roy reads
this out just before he sings "I Hate the White Man" or maybe after
he's sung it not sure which.

Can anyone remember which album it's on?

Thanks

Graeme

Hi,

It's on one of the "live at the red lion" recordings (I don't know which number I'm afraid, but it's going around on the red lion x2 vine. I had the poem in a book of native American verse called 'touch the earth'. In fact, the poem was really my introduction to Roy Harper. I was at uni and heard a friend playing 'live at the red lion' and recognised the verse so stayed to listen to the rest of the tape. Then found out he was playing the following week and decided to go and see him. Fantastic gig, just after Hillsborough (I was at Liverpool) which seemed to have an influence. Finished with 'hangman', I remember that. Anyway, I digress.

This is the piece:

By the time I was forty I could see that our country was changing fast, and
that these changes were causing us to live very differently. Anybody could
now see that soon there would be no buffalo on the plains and everybody was
wondering how we could live after they were gone. There were few war parties
and almost no raids…..White men, with their spotted buffalo were on the
plains about us. Their houses were nears the water holes, and their villages
on the rivers. We made up our minds to be friendly with them, in spite of
all the changes they were bringing. But we found this difficult, because the
white men too often promised to do one thing and then when they acted at
all, did another.

They spoke very loudly when they said their laws were made for everybody;
but we soon learned that although they expected us to keep them, they
thought nothing of breaking them themselves. They told us not to drink
whisky, yet they made it themselves and traded it to us for furs and robes
until both were nearly gone. Their wise ones said we might have their
religion, but when we tried to understand it we found that there were too
many kinds of religion among white men for us to understand, and that
scarcely any two white men agreed which was the right one to learn. This
bothered us a great deal until we saw that the white man did not take his
religion any more seriously than he did his laws, and that he kept both of
them just behind him, like helpers, to use when they might do him most good
in his dealings with strangers. These were not our ways. We kept the laws we
made and lived our religion. We have never been able to understand the white
man, who fools nobody but himself.

Alleek-chea-ahoosh





Posted: Tue - April 12, 2005 at 04:21 PM          

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