The Ballad of the Choctaw-Apache

Well, the East Texas wind

Goes whistlin' through the pines

And I followed it down to Louisiana

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 you 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

Well 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 fallin' on a grain of sand

Well, 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 that they 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 rushin' 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 still 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

Nah, it just don't mean a thing

Well, it just don't mean a thing

To the faces in your hand