White Folks Was Wild Once Too
by Whitman McGowan

Yeah white folks was wild once, too
We'd get a wild tatoo and paint our faces blue
If we smelled somegame we knew just what do do
And someone always dug where the medicine grew
We had our kind of music and our rituals, too
Yeah, white folks was wild once, too.

Forget about the Mau-Mau, forget about the Sioux
We was homesteaders back when the glaciers withdrew
And where our chiefs lay buried, everybody knew
We had a feel for nature, a sense of what was true
Yeah, white folks was wild once, too.

We put up lots of big rocks framing up the moon
'N pointing at the sun and the other stars, too
We did a whole damn lot of scary hoodoo
'N voodoo 'n mojo 'n sacrifices, too
Yeah, white folks was wild once, too.

We took strange powdes to improve our view
Before the Wright Brothers, I'm telling you we flew
Getting right with the Gods was the mission of our crew
We danced around a fire chanting Woo-Woo-Woo
Yeah, white folks was wild once, too.

Wacky doo, wacky doo, wacky doo, wacky doo
We used to like to drink and fight, and used to like to ooh!
For all I know, we still just maybe do
And we were really ready for the world to start anew
Yeah, white folks was wild once too.

We had baskets to weave and a bone to chew
We got real funky on some homemade brew
We had a helluva time at a bar-be-que
IF you saw us today you'd put us in a zoo
Yeah, white folks was wild once too!

appeared in Mabon 1991 Green Egg Magazine

"This particular bit of whimsy comes from decades of feeling like I wasn't a native. I mean when the Mayans were building their temples, and the Chinese had very advanced observatories, and the Africans had great kingdoms with complex social structures, "my" people, who were natives once too, were still running around hitting each other with sticks and painting their faces blue. And now "we're" supposed to be the point men for civilization! We were the 'last' to be civilzed! Just about anybody is more qualified for the job than we are." -- Whitman Ott McGowan