This was written by John D. Loudermilk, a singer/songwriter who recorded as “Johnny Dee” and wrote “Tobacco Road” for The Nashville Teens and “Ebony Eyes” for The Everly Brothers. The song was first recorded in 1968 by a British singer named Don Fardon, whose version hit #20 in the US and #3 in the UK.
The song is about the plight of the Cherokee Indians. Who, in 1791, were displaced from their home in Georgia to a reservation in Oklahoma. Raiders frontman Mark Lindsay, whose ancestry was part Indian, thought that this would be a good song to record. We agree that is was indeed.
The group was formerly known as Paul Revere and the Raiders. This song became not just their biggest hit, but the best-selling single for Columbia Records. Isn’t it ironic that a song like this, brimming with simmering rage and an implied threat to retake the land for the natives, was written by a white Country songwriter? It was even recorded by a band named after the white European patriots whose colonization of the US took the land from the Cherokees in the first place. And sold by Columbia Records, a company originating as “Columbia Graphophone Company” in the UK.
(source songfacts.com)
Lyrics for Paul Revere and the Raiders
They took the whole Cherokee nation
Put us on this reservation
Took away our ways of life
The tomahawk and the bow and knife
Took away our native tongue
And taught their English to our young
And all the beads we made by hand
Are nowadays made in Japan
Cherokee people, Cherokee tribe
So proud to live, so proud to die
They took the whole Indian nation
Locked us on this reservation
Though I wear a shirt and tie
I’m still part redman deep inside
Cherokee people, Cherokee tribe
So proud to live, so proud to die
But maybe someday when they learn
Cherokee nation will return, will return, will return
Will return, will return
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