https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangas_Coloradas 🪦☠️🪦☠️🪦☠️🪦☠️🪦 I stood two meters tall above the men who feared my name Fuerte they had called me once, before the war, before the shame Forty years I led my people, signed the treaties that they broke Every peace I tried to offer turned to ash and gunpowder smoke They tied me to a tree at Santa Rita, whipped me like a slave That whip is why a hundred miners never saw another grave But by sixty-five years old, the fighting wore me to the bone So I rode in under truce flag to talk peace, and peace alone I carried the flag of truce in my hand, white as the bone they'd find I trusted a man named Shirland and left my warriors behind They say I tried to run that night - that lie is how it reads A chief don't run from soldiers when he's come in peace, not me, not me Heated bayonets in darkness, that's how the soldiers played I fought them with my bare hands 'til the bullets came and stayed West gave the order plainly: dead, not alive, that was his creed A general's word was worth less than the word he'd sworn to me I carried the flag of truce in my hand, white as the bone they'd find I trusted a man named Shirland and left my warriors behind They say I tried to run that night - that lie is how it reads A chief don't run from soldiers when he's come in peace, not me, not me They buried me shallow by the fort, then came back the next day. Cut the head from the body. Boiled it down 'til the skull came clean. Sent it east to a man who measured bones to read a dead man's soul. He wrote that my skull showed greatness. He never asked the body what was left. An Apache without his head walks forever unfinished in the next world. That is the part they never tell you. That is the part that started the war. Twenty-five years of war came after, every chief you've come to know Cochise, Victorio, Geronimo - I taught them all the way to go But I never got my ending, never got my body whole So I'm still out there unfinished, still demanding back my soul
