To the tune of Red Iron ore

 

Jane Doe was brought in from off of the street

Laid out on the table wrapped up in a sheet

They wrote down her number without any name

A woman was murdered and none was to blame 

 

In the north reservation there’s a chill in the air

And the lines on the faces are heavy with care 

And the pain in your belly pounds hard on your brain 

And the whiskey like poisons runs thick in the veins

 

Of the men with the money who come out to play, 

Drive up from the port to find out their prey
With presents and promises in a young girl’s ear

There’s more on the docks than you’ll ever get here

 

And Duluth rusts away by the waves and the heights

And the drunks take the streets in the red neon lights

And the lake sinks the sun and the night turns to black 

Out past the harbor and the taconite stacks 

 

And the girls stand cold by the skeleton quay

And they wait for the freight liners off Thunder Bay 

Across Gitchegumee they make for the shore

To buy the red women and the red iron ore 

 

The harbor horn screams and the freighter boat lands

The dollars and women are all changing hands

And the sailors buy in where their money is right 

To play the great settler night after night 

 

Well I’ve heard it’s been said and I think it’s the truth

That colony days never died in Duluth

For three hundred years they’ve been bargained and sold 

To the soldier, the logger, and the iron boat hold 

 

They’ve been killed by the needle and killed by the knife 

They’ve been cut down so low that they’ve took their own life 

They’ve been put on the Earth in a bed made of thorns 

They’ve been sentenced to die since the day they were born