Here are the lyrics as I hear them on my Ian & Sylvia album.


THE RENEGADE
L: Ian Tyson; M: Sylvia Fricker (Tyson)


Up on the hillside policemen were climbing,
The ghosts of the night wind their fantasies did tell.
Dark on the snow, with the blood drops a-dryin',
Slipped through cold fingers the whiskey bottle fell.

CHORUS
Kla-how-ya, mother, I leave you with your white man;
I curse their church that tells us that our fathers were wrong!
And I'll hunt my own mowitch and I'll drink my own whiskey
And I'll sing until morning the old fashioned song.

Fires of the potlatch are scattered in their ashes.
Ma-sat-chie-ta-ma-now-wits, the evil one remains.
And our children cannot follow the old nor the new ways
And the poles of their fathers are rotting in the rain.

(CHORUS)

Daylight came late over high coastal mountains.
The renegade stood watching, his rifle by his side
Then he emptied his gun up into the pale yellow sunrise
And he ran down the hillside the to place where he died.

(CHO)