Paul Revere & The Raiders – Indian Reservation

“Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)” – Single by Raiders from the album Indian Reservation
B-side: “Terry’s Tune”
Released: February 1971
Recorded: December 3, 1970
Label: Columbia
Songwriter: John D. Loudermilk
Producer: Mark Lindsay
Charted No.1 in US

The Raiders’ “Indian Reservation” entered the Billboard Hot 100 on April 10, 1971. On July 24, it reached the top spot for a single week. “Indian Reservation” spent a total of 22 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

In 1970, Raiders singer Mark Lindsay was looking for new material for his solo career after scoring the hits “Arizona” and “Silver Bird”, when Columbia A&R head Jack Gold offered “Indian Reservation” to him. With the unavailability of his usual producer Jerry Fuller, Lindsay decided to produce the recording himself, with the backing of the Wrecking Crew session musicians, on December 3, 1970. Unsure of the song’s success, Lindsay decided to label as a Raiders’ single.

The song is about the plight of the Cherokee Indians, who in 1838 were displaced from their home in Georgia to a reservation in Oklahoma. Raiders frontman Mark Lindsay, whose ancestry was part Native American, thought this would be a good song to record.

The last line of the song was prophetic. The Eastern and Western bands of the Cherokee Nation became one again on April 6, 1984 when the tribes officially reunited at the Red Clay Council Grounds (now a state park) outside Cleveland, Tennessee.