Longfellow sets the scene in the lonely, echoing mountains where Sioux chiefs plot vengeance against “the White Chief with yellow hair”—General Custer. Rain-in-the-Face cries for revenge, and the landscape seems to throw back his fury. The poem then moves to an idyllic riverside village, but the calm is deceptive: Sitting Bull and three thousand warriors lie in ambush. Custer and his three hundred men ride straight into the trap, and every one of them dies, swallowed by “the sudden darkness of death.” In the aftermath, Rain-in-the-Face escapes carrying Custer’s heart as a grisly trophy. The mood is heavy with dread and sorrow, and the closing stanza shifts from storytelling to a mournful question. The speaker doesn’t simply blame the Sioux; instead, he laments that “our broken faith”—broken treaties and promises—brought on this catastrophe, leaving a century of ruin in its wake.
The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face — Summary
In that desolate land and lone, Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone Roar down their mountain path, By their fires the Sioux Chiefs Muttered their woes and griefs And the menace of their wrath.
"Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face, "Revenue upon all the race Of the White Chief with yellow hair!" And the mountains dark and high From their crags re-echoed the cry Of his anger and despair.
In the meadow, spreading wide By woodland and riverside The Indian village stood; All was silent as a dream, Save the rushing a of the stream And the blue-jay in the wood.
In his war paint and his beads, Like a bison among the reeds, In ambush the Sitting Bull Lay with three thousand braves Crouched in the clefts and caves, Savage, unmerciful!
Into the fatal snare The White Chief with yellow hair And his three hundred men Dashed headlong, sword in hand; But of that gallant band Not one returned again.
The sudden darkness of death Overwhelmed them like the breath And smoke of a furnace fire: By the river's bank, and between The rocks of the ravine, They lay in their bloody attire.
But the foemen fled in the night, And Rain-in-the-Face, in his flight Uplifted high in air As a ghastly trophy, bore The brave heart, that beat no more, Of the White Chief with yellow hair.
Whose was the right and the wrong? Sing it, O funeral song, With a voice that is full of tears, And say that our broken faith Wrought all this ruin and scathe, In the Year of a Hundred Years.