I have led a Christian life
I speak of family history
As it's transcribed by my wife
I sit here in New Hampton
The year is 1910
Looking back from Iowa
I was born in Temple Moor
in 1825
Recall a happy boyhood un
til my mother died
Starvation crept across the land
America's our dream.
Six cruel weeks on stormy seas
aboard the ship Tyrene.
American primitive man
in an American primitive land.
I wash my face in a frying pan.
American primitive man.
At last we docked in old Quebec
The English offered farm and ground
But we lived too long under English rule
To United States we're bound
By train and then by cattle boat
All the filth down in that hole
We landed in Milwaukee,
trekked two hundred miles or more
A sack of new potatoes
was carried by each man
Four spades for cultivation
we brought from Meyerland
We worked at splittin' railroad ties,
bought one old milkin' cow
A quarter section uncleared land,
two oxen and a plow
At night we heard the wolves howl
on our newly purchased farm
And starving lads from the Civil War
took shelter in our barn
The Larsons and the Coonies,
the Russells, the Malloys
We tilled the soil of Iowa
and grew a spate of girls and boys
American Primitive Man
In an American Primitive Land
A whiskey still in an oatmeal can
American Primitive Man
I'm an American Primitive