Ken Lonnquist
Music with a Message

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1. Wisconsin Poem

Lyrics adapted from a poem by 

Reinhold Johannes Kaebitzsch 

 

Blue hearts in the crawfish swim

For the coolness in the stream

We know to be Wisconsin

The wild in the Green Heron

Apples for our black horses

Yellow woods of corn

All of us are immigrants

To these prairies sun flowered

Or black-eyed with Susans

To the rivers of the Whippoorwill

 

At your stream-forest

We scouted out Blackhawk

Yearning to be free

The Winnebago and The Fox

Sauk and Norwegian

German, Finn, and Swede

I came to talk with ghosts

Hoping I might learn the way

The story unfolded

And how to say “Wisconsin”

 

Eagles white-haired, yellow thunder

A crow and dancing bear in the berry patch

A giant lookout for the Spirit rains

Geese and Cranes and yellow Warblers

White birch, Woodchucks, 

Yellowthroats, Whitetail,

Cattail, Moose swimming The Apostles

And yellow flowers foresting our valleys

Everywhere, everywhere…

Overgrowing all Wisconsin

 

 

 

 

2. The Tale Of Us All (This Is Home)
 

This is home… where my people dwell

It takes more than just one tongue to tell

The tale of us all slowly becoming one

The tale of us all here, where the river runs

 

In the land, in the crackling fire

In the wind, in the river choir

Hear the tale of us all slowly becoming one

The tale of us all here, where the river runs

This is home

 

 

 

3. Can't help Wondering

instrumental

 

 

 

4. Blackhawk's Theme

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5. A New Land

 

 

6. Minstrels Tell Their Story
 

 

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7. Conflict

instrumental

 

 

8. A New Land (Wagon Trails)
 

 

9. The Tale Of Us All

 

 

 

 

10. Minstrels Again

 

 

11. The Battle
 Instrumental

 

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12. Blackhawk's Theme 2

 

 

 

13. This Is Home

 

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14. The Battle

Lyrics adapted from a U.S. soldier’s diary

 

Saturday, July 21st, 1832

Cold and blowing rain

We renewed our pursuit

Following the day we camped

At 10 in the morning

A scouting party

Killed a Sauk warrior

Sick, and unable to travel

 

Mourning at his wife’s grave,

Somehow they suspected him

Of leading an ambush

He was a Sauk warrior

He was

 

Doubling our speed,

Anxious to press forward

The trail way was littered

With the trinkets of the Indians

 

They began to show themselves

From the heights, right and left

Diverting our attention

Rapidly our lines advanced

Halting, forming once or twice

To meet the enemy

 

This went on throughout the day

’Til we fixed our bayonets

And drove them from the hills

To the river valley, down below

 

Overtaking them, they fought

Fired our guns, killing one

And wounding two or three

A soldier was heard calling out:

“Stillman is not here!”

And then we started charging

Indians lay in the grass

So many in the grass

Don’r know the number

Of Indians killed that day.

 

One of our men was killed:

Thomas Jefferson Short.

Several more were wounded.

Don’t know how many Indians

So many Indians

But the battle was over

And we had won.