LYRICS FROM MUSTARDS RETREAT ALBUM "5 Miles or 50,000 Years"

Detroit 1763

My name is Henri Ponchartrain, a voyageur du bois. I married Shawanokwe

near the place we call DÕetroit. Her brothers call me brother, all

against the English Law and they named me Kagetchiwan among the

Ottawa.

In 1762 the English came to claim this place. They made a proclamation

that restricted men by race. All Frenchmen here must sign an oath to

serve the English King and Indians must pay double furs to trade for

anything.

Now Shawanokwe overheard some talk along the shore of the anger of

Chief Pontiac and of his plan for war: TheyÕd play Lacrosse outside the

fort before the gates were closed and every Indian woman would hide

weapons in her clothes.

When all the English soldiers had their blue eyes on the ball the

signal to attack would be to: throw it over the wall. A hundred

painted warriors would run whooping in full chase and take their war

clubs with them as they ran inside the gate.

This dreadful rumor startled me and Shawanokwe wept. But joining

hands, we rose and to the Indian camp we crept. Though French, I was

in danger going to that place at night so she rubbed ashes on my face.

She said I looked too white.

We run from the wrath of Pontiac. We run from the English guns. Paddle

across Lake Erie and up the broad Maumee... We will take the Wabash

portage walking slowly through the trees and float down the Ohio to

the sea. ...float down the Ohio to the sea.

We listened as the firelight flickered underneath the trees. Pontiac

told of other forts his friends captured with ease: St. Joseph and

Sanduskey and Michilimacinac where the dead men were the lucky ones.

All this, the eagle saw.

Oh Pontiac by moonlight is a man too full of dreams. He boasts: King

LouisÕ army will come up from New Orleans to help his Indian brothers

and retake this land for France and I know this is not true, but I

keep silent as they dance.

Now a man stood up to speak who had returned from Montreal. He said,

ÒThere are more English than the red leaves of the fall.Ó But Pontiac

grew furious and spoke loud for all to hear ÒCome with me now and we

will count the English with our spears!Ó

We run from the wrath of Pontiac. We run from the English guns. Paddle

across Lake Erie and up the broad Maumee. We will take the Wabash

portage walking slowly through the trees and float down the Ohio to the

sea. ...float down the Ohio to the sea.

Shawanokwe trembled as we listened on our knees. She said, ÒWe must be

gone from here before the rivers freeze. Whichever side may win will

show no mercy on our love...Ó And we walked away in silence to our home

beside the cove.

And long I sat before my fire and smoked my Indian pipe. And restless

I went walking just before the morning light. I only thought to stop

the war that wicked men would win and I betrayed my brothers who named

me Kagetchiwan.

So it was that when the Indians came to start the game they found the

English soldiers with their weapons on parade. We thought no one would

fight if just the English closed the gate but shots were fired and good

men died. The war came anyway.

ÒWho told these things by moonlight, loud enough for English ears?Ó

ÒWho whispered in a language that an Englishman could hear?Ó Chief

Pontiac burned our cabin down, his voice was thick with rage... someone

had seen a spirit who had ashes on his face.

We run from the wrath of Pontiac. We run from the English guns. Paddle

across Lake Erie and up the broad Maumee. We will take the Wabash

portage walking slowly through the trees and float down the Ohio to the

sea... ...float down the Ohio to the sea.

The smoke rises into the sky. We paddle this canoe. Maybe the world is

big enough, maybe we will prove true. It is too much for me, a simple

voyageur du bois... so call me Henri Ponchartrain, Kagetchiwan no more.

Hough/Tamulevich

The Canoe Sonnet

Gray mist. A paddle makes a woody clank.

The river gurgles quietly beside

tall bluffs with scrub, wet rocks and sandy banks

strong current, sudden deeps and none too wide.

Trees on the bluffs get undercut and slide

in ruin down the sand, more every year.

The river guides cut through jams one boat wide.

Each spring we launch canoes. The river's clear.

We are the first this morning, jump two deer...

They break the silence: whiteflag, snort and crash.

The paddles dip and J-stroke, sweep and steer

through rocks and snags to camp and corned beef hash.

A sudden bridge reminds us of our race...

We cut the stream beneath and leave no trace.

Michael Hough

The New Pioneers

When the clouds turned brown and circled around and mysterious sickness

occurred in the town there were few that were ready and none that were

safe not even the ones who had planned to escape. Oh the dead ones

outnumbered the quick in one week and many were left where they fell in

the street and many were lost who could no longer fight when the dogs

and the rats fought for bones in the night

We are the New Pioneers, in the wagons we ride and it's gather you into

the circle, it's going on night. And Sarah, better load up your

shotgun, it looks like a fight. We are the New Pioneers, and the kids

are all right.

I suffered from fever and noise in my head. They threw me in the

dumpster and said I was dead. But I lived and slept warm in the

festering trash and awoke in the morning of smoldering ash. Sarah took

the shotgun and she went to the street. There was nothing to do and

there was nothing to eat. And she dodged house to house from the gangs

of armed men who had water in bottles and food out of cans.

And we are the New Pioneers, in the wagons we ride and it's gather you

into the circle, it's going on night. And Sarah, better load up your

shotgun, it looks like a fight. We are the New Pioneers, and the kids

are all right

She was standing in a doorway with the gun in her hand. I was skinning

a rat with a piece of a can and she might just have shot me because I

looked like a beast but we shared that grim dinner, and it seemed like

a feast. And we live in a wagon and we hide from the men who are trying

to make order out of chaos again. And the nights can be cold but the

blankets are warm and we breathe for a space in the eye of the storm.

And we are the New Pioneers, in the wagons we ride and it's gather you

into the circle, it's going on night. And Sarah, better load up your

shotgun, it looks like a fight We are the New Pioneers, and the kids

are all right.

Michael Hough

Bad Dreams at Night

It was some nameless town where my strong face broke down and I stood

in the alley alone. You gave me your smile and your strength for awhile

and later you took me on home. I awoke in your arms with no lights and

alarms and the night slowly turned like a wheel and the cries and the

echoes went away through the screen and I knew in your arms I might

heal.

I get bad dreams at night from the smoke and the lights and the faces

that won't let me be and sometimes they wake you, and sometimes just me

but the grace that you have sets me free.

I came home from the war and I walked through the door of the house

where my mail had been sent. But the rooms were all bare, there was

nobody there I had nowhere to go, and I went. With my face on the floor

I didn't think I'd go lower but the bottom has never been found... So

I'll sleep in your trust and the world can go bust it ain't easy, but

it's all right now.

I get bad dreams at night from the smoke and the lights and the faces

that won't let me be and sometimes they wake you, and sometimes just me

but the grace that you have sets me free.

Tamulevich/Hough

The Ballad of Elmer McCurdy

This story begins in an old L.A. funhouse: with carnival props and

machines. A TV crew came in with cameras and booms and extras to set up

a scene. There's an old funhouse monster of plaster and wires that

stood in the corner alone. Somebody bumped him and broke off an arm and

inside the arm was a bone. The authorities called for an investigation

to see if a crime had been done and found Elmer McCurdy, a mummified

outlaw that for years was a figure of fun.

So this is the story of Elmer McCurdy who lived just a little too late.

For the West had been won when he put on his gun... He was gone when he

rode through the gate.

Elmer McCurdy was an old Western badman. He stood just about five foot

three. In 1911 he held up a train and he rode to a strange destiny. The

loot from the job came to $46.00 he rode out to Charles Ravard's farm.

He was tracked by the posse surrounded and cornered at last all alone

in the barn. Well he fought, and they shot him that day in the autumn

and no one came forward as kin. So his body was pickled and sold to a

freak show and Elmer went riding again.

So this is the story of Elmer McCurdy who lived just a little too late.

For the West had been won when he put on his gun... He was gone when he

rode through the gate.

He was put on exhibit for ten cents admission... He was lost, he was

sold and mislaid. He was handed and bandied from carnie to carnie like

some loan that was never repaid. When the sideshow played out, he was

waxed and refurbished and painted to glow in the dark... He was hung

from the gallows inside a small funhouse an attraction of little

remark.

And he stayed there for years. I mean decades. He got dusty. People

would come down with their kids and the snow cones and the cotton candy

and they'd all pay their quarters and go inside and get scared and have

a good laugh and then they'd all get to go home. When the powers that

be found out who Elmer was and where he came from, they decided that:

whatever his debt to society was, he'd probably paid it. I t was time

to take him home too.

So they gave him his grave down in Guthrie Oklahoma on Boot Hill,

1977... and his soul give a yell from the short side of Hell because

you can't be an outlaw in Heaven.

So this is the story of Elmer McCurdy he was gone when he rode through

the gate. For the West had been won when he put on his gun He's too

little, too slow and too late.

Come a ti odee adee aye oh dee oh daydee Yippee yi yippee aydee aye

oh....

Michael Hough with thanks to Cindy Penn

Reincarnation

"Now what is Reincarnation?" a cowpoke asked his friend. His pal

replied, "That happens when your life is at its end. They comb your

hair and wash your neck and clean your fingernails and lay you in a

padded box, away from life's travails. That box and you goes in a hole

they've dug into the ground. Reincarnation starts when you're planted,

beneath the mound. Them clods melt down, along with the box and you who

are inside and then you're just beginning on your transformation ride.

After a while the grass will grow upon your rendered mound till one day

on your moldered grave, a lonely flower is found. And say a horse

should wander by, and graze upon that flower that once was you, but

now's become your vegetative bower. That posy, which the horse does eat

up with its other feed becomes bone and fat and muscle, essential to

the steed. But some is left that it can't use, and so it passes through

and finally lays upon the ground, this thing that once was you. And say

by chance, I wanders by. And I see this upon the ground. And I wonder

and I ponder on this thing that I have found. And I think upon

Reincarnation and on life and death and such... And come away

concluding, Slim: You ain't changed, all that much."

by Wallace McRae