It grows as it goes
Through struggle and toil
Invaded, unconquered
Foreign boots upon the soil
Revolt in Santa Fe
To arise on Christmas Day
Smothered at its birth
The Ancients rise again
Gray Eminence of Taos
Stoking flames of dissent
Ceding land, reaping hatred
Sickness unto death
To the home of the gringo
In the dark before sunrise
Flinging arrows to rout them
Clawing the walls to survive
With lightning in their veins
War chants on liquored tongues
Shot, stabbed, and pierced
Bent's scalp baking in the sun
Los diablos Americanos
Struck in swift reprisal
Pursued from hilltop to hilltop
To the pueblo at red willows
The citadel besieged
Raining hellfire and damnation
Bursting shells, shrieking wounded
Little quarter asked or given
A drumhead court-martial
In the wake of devastation
From a cottonwood in Taos
The conquered hung for treason
If an injury must be done
Let it be so severe
That with the passage of time
Vengeance need not be feared