"The Indian's Prayer" is a popular song with music composed by I.B. Woodbury

Isaac B. Woodbury

Isaac Baker Woodbury was a 19th-century composer and publisher of church music.Woodbury studied with Lowell Mason in Boston and with teachers in Paris and London. Upon his return to Boston he taught music, played organ, and directed choral groups...

 in 1846. The author is not known. Woodbury, a composer of religious music, dedicated the song to his friend and student I.O. Emerson, Esq.

Luther Orlando Emerson

-Biography:Emerson was born in Parsonsfield, Maine on August 3, 1820. He attended Parsonsfield Seminary and Effingham Academy, originally planning to be a doctor. Later he studied music under Isaac Woodbury. He taught for eight years in Salem, Massachusetts...

. The lyrics express an unnamed Indian's wish to be allowed to return to his home in the "far distant west."

Lyrics

The lyrics as they appear in Woodbury's original sheet music:

Let me go to my home in the far distant west,

To the scenes of my childhood in innocence blest;

Where the tall cedars wave and the bright waters flow,

Where my fathers repose. Let me go, let me go.

Where my fathers repose. Let me go, let me go.

Let me go to the spot where the cataract plays,

Where oft I have sported in boyhood’s bright days,

And greet my poor mother, whose heart will o’erflow

At the sight of the child. Let me go, let me go.

At the sight of the child. Let me go, let me go.

Let me go to me sire, by whose battlescar’d side,

I have sported so oft in the morn of my pride,

And exulted to conquer the insolent foe,

To my father, the chief, let me go, let me go.

To my father, the chief, let me go, let me go.

And oh! let me go to my flashing eyed maid,

Who taught me to love, ’neath the green willow’s shade,

Whose heart, like the fawn’s, leaps as pure as the snow,

To the bosom it loves. Let me go, let me go.

To the bosom it loves. Let me go, let me go.

And oh! let me go to my wild forest home—

No more from it life-cheering pleasures to roam.

’Neath the groves of the glen, let my ashes lie low—

To my home in the woods, let me go, let me go.

To my home in the woods, let me go, let me go.