"Run To The Hills" as written by and Stephen Percy Harris....
White man came across the sea
He brought us pain and misery
He killed our tribes killed our creed
He took our game for his own need
We fought him hard we fought him well
Out on the plains we gave him hell
But many came too much for Cree
Oh will we ever be set free?
Riding through dust clouds and barren wastes
Galloping hard on the plains
Chasing the redskins back to their holes
Fighting them at their own game
Murder for freedom the stab in the back
Women and children are cowards attack
Run to the hills, run for your lives
Run to the hills, run for your lives
Soldier blue in the barren wastes
Hunting and killing their game
Raping the women and wasting the men
The only good Indians are tame
Selling them whiskey and taking their gold
Enslaving the young and destroying the old
Run to the hills, run for your lives
He brought us pain and misery
He killed our tribes killed our creed
He took our game for his own need
We fought him hard we fought him well
Out on the plains we gave him hell
But many came too much for Cree
Oh will we ever be set free?
Riding through dust clouds and barren wastes
Galloping hard on the plains
Chasing the redskins back to their holes
Fighting them at their own game
Murder for freedom the stab in the back
Women and children are cowards attack
Run to the hills, run for your lives
Run to the hills, run for your lives
Soldier blue in the barren wastes
Hunting and killing their game
Raping the women and wasting the men
The only good Indians are tame
Selling them whiskey and taking their gold
Enslaving the young and destroying the old
Run to the hills, run for your lives
Lyrics submitted by Novartza, edited by JackTStripper, RookieGTO, penisklaus, greanbanana
"Run To The Hills" as written by Stephen Percy Harris
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
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The Cree, I believe, lived in the Dakotas or somewhere else on the Great Plains, so to them the Europeans would not have come accross the sea. If Maiden had changed the lyrics to leave out any reference to the sea, it would make more sense.
I think the song is just about the conflict between the Native Americans and Europeans in general and spans different regions, time periods, and povs.
Joey is right...It is about the Indian Massacres.
Reasons why I disagree with Drav:
1. The English did not fight the Indians on the plains, they never made it that far west.
2. "Soldier BLUE on the barren wastes". Everyone knows that the British were redcoats and the Americans were blue.
I really don't think they are sympathetic or not sympathetic. I think they are just narrating it from each sides point of view. They seem to remain neutral to me.
Secondly: The lyrics are about 50% bullshit. I'm so sick of people lumping every American Indian tribe together and labelling them "The Noble Red Man" who was happy and free and clean and industrious till we fucked them over, like a real life version of Disney's Pocahontas or something..
Fact is, we did fuck the Indians. Some of them were decent, industrious tribes. A lot of them, including the Apaches, Mescaleros, Blackfeet, etc. were monstrously brutal savages who practiced torture and rape on their prisoners, valued their men by how many scalps he'd taken, and had been massacring the women and children of any OTHER INDIAN tribe nearby for many years before we got there.
Just like different European cultures, there's different Indian cultures. Some of them were Klingons and literally spent their days raiding and massacring anybody who came close.
Most of the tribes didn't deserve the two-timing crap they got from us. But at least a few of the ones who got ground out of existence by the US Army were the ones who built their entire tribe on war and murder and had been killing their neighbors for a long time already.
Go read the reports of somebody who actually saw what things were like instead of some shithead bleeding-heart "I'm embarassed to be white" cultural anthropologist who wouldn't know a real Indian if he fell over one.
And it's true, many of them were savages, but was their culture. White men didn`t have to intervene with this.
Did they deserve smallpox? Alcoholism? The Trail Of Tears? Being killed in battle is one thing, disease-borne death-in-life is quite another. As is genocide.
Can we agree that the HUMAN race is a virus upon the planet Earth? “Good” and “bad” are relative terms.
anyway a brilliant song, one of maidens best.
extremely clever and effective
"Soldier BLUE on the barren wastes". Everyone knows that the British were redcoats and the Americans were blue. But seeing as America was not a country at the time it must have been the french because there uniforms were blue (militaryheritage.com/…). and thank you mitch1 for the comment there...you really helped me piece this one together lol
I find it difficult to decide whether Maiden is sympathetic towards the Natives, as expressed in the beginning of the song, or if they are proud of what has happened throughout the rest of the song.
In the rest of the song the lyrics says:
"Hunting and killing their game
Raping the women and wasting the men
The only good Indians are tame
Selling them whiskey and taking their gold
Enslaving the young and destroying the old"
To me it dosn't saoudn like Maiden are specially proud of what the invaders did :)