Buffalo Skinners
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie
Contact Publisher - The Bicycle Music Company/Concord Music

Come all you old time cowboys and listen to my song
But please do not grow weary I'll not detain you long
It's concerning some wild cowboys who did agree to go
To spend one summer pleasantly of the trail of the buffalo.

I found myself in Griffin in the spring of eighty three
When a well known famous drover come walking up to me
Says "How do you do young fellow? And how would you like to go
And spend one summer pleasantly on the trail of the buffalo?"

I being out of work right then to the drover I did say
"Going out on the buffalo road depends upon your pay
If you pay good wages and transportation to and fro,
I thinks to myself I'll go with you to the hunt of the buffalo."

"Of course I'll pay good wages and transportation too
If you agree to work for me until the season's through
But if you do get homesick and try to run away
You'll starve to death out on the trail and also lose your pay."

With all his flattering talking he signed up quite a train
Some ten or twelve in number strong able bodied men
Out trip it was a pleasant one as we hit the westward road
Until we crossed old Boggy Creek in old New Mexico.

And there our pleasures ended and our troubles all begun
A lightning storm it hit us and it made the buffalo run
We got all full of stickers from the cactus that did grow
And the outlaws watched to pick us off in the hills of Mexico.

Our working season ended and the drover would not pay
"You et and drunk too much and so you're all in debt to me!"
But the cowboys never had heard of such a thing as bankrupt law
So we left that drover's bones to bleach on the plains of buffalo.


© Copyright 1956 (renewed), 1962 (renewed) by the The Bicycle Music Company/Concord Music
Available on:
Album cover art where song appears