Sand Creek River -- Fabrizio de André, 1981

This ballad is inspired by the massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho people (mostly women and children) at the Sand Creek River in Colorado in 1864. De André tells the story through the eyes and words of a child victim.


They took our hearts under a dark blanket

We slept with no fear under the little dead moon

It was a twenty year old general

Blue eyes and uniform

It was a twenty year old general

The son of a thunderstorm.

There’s a silver dollar at the bottom of Sand Creek

Our warriors too far away tracking buffaloes

And that far away music grew louder and louder

I shut my eyes three times

Yet I found I was still there

I asked granpa if it was only a dream

Granpa said yes

Sometimes the fish sing at the bottom of Sand Creek.

I dreamed so hard, blood came out of my nose

Thunder in one ear, paradise in the other

The smallest tears

The biggest tears

When the tree in the snow

Bloomed with red stars

Now the children sleep in a Sand Creek bed.

When the sun rose its head between the night’s shoulders

There were dogs and smoke and overturned tipis.

I shot an arrow to the sky

To make it breathe

I shot an arrow to the wind.

To make it bleed.

Look for the third arrow at the bottom of Sand Creek.