To me, this song jumps back and forth between the sad past of the Trail Of Tears (where there was no road map) and the Native-American present often filled with disillusionment, alcohol, government betrayal (in the gambling game of cards/luck) that the tribe experienced in DEALings like treaties and broken promises. The writer of the song, Carl Oglesby, a former president of SDS---Students For A Democratic Society in the 60s---told me that he had grown up near Cherokee, North Carolina. This song has always seemed to be enhanced even more BECAUSE of it's ambiguity. It's a noir gem. I learned if from Utah Phillips in the early 1970s at Chicago's Earl Of Old Town folk bar on Wells Street. Carl Oglesby made 2 albums (LPs) for Vanguard Records. This was the best song on both of them.

Art Thieme