I discovered this while looking for something else. It seems unique. It's from Sixteen Years on the Great American Desert; Or, The Trials And Triumphs of a Frontier Life by Mrs. A. M. Green [Annie Maria V. Green] (Titusville, Pa.: Frank W. Truesdell, Printer, 1887), page 47. The author of the book implies that she wrote the song and says she sang it to her husband, but she says nothing about the tune.


A UNION COLONY VICTIM'S LAMENT.

When first to this country a stranger I came
I was much disgusted and still am the same,
And had I the means I would leave it in haste;
Oh! I don't like Colorado, it don't suit my taste. .
There is nothing but cactus stands the grasshopper raid,
Which comes every season our crops to invade;
And though hard we've striven to weaken their force,
We're compelled to acknowledge they are but getting worse.

We've fought them with water, oil, fire, and tar,
We have spent our last dollar to get where we are;
And what, in the future, we shall do God but knows,
I fear we shall suffer for food and for clothes.
There's the two per cent, interest, oh God, what a curse,
Which adds to our misery and makes matters worse;
It will mortgage the farm, which we have tried to call home,
We'll be left, as the red man, on a desert to roam.

My husband I pity, he is wasting his life
To obtain a scant living for his children and wife.
He's become so discouraged, so changed in his ways,
Oh, I never shall see him as in former days.
Our children, oh, bless them, to us they are dear,
But how shall we teach them God's name to revere;
We've deprived them of blessings which justly they claim,
And for which I shall sorrow while here I remain.

The Sabbath, which once was a day of sweet rest,
Is now spent in toiling for bread in the west;
Scarcely time e'er to offer one prayer to our God,
And I'm told that the bible is not but a fraud.
After five years hard toiling, with hopes which were vain,
I have sunk in despair on this desolate plain.
I have one thing to ask now, and that I do crave,
If I can't leave Colorado hide me in the grave.


There is some information about Union Colony of Colorado in Wikipedia.