What is "red wing"

"Red Wing" is a popular song written in 1907 with music by Kerry Mills and lyrics by Thurland Chattaway. Mills adapted the music of the verse from Robert Schumann's piano composition "The Happy Farmer, Returning From Work" from his 1848 Album for the Young, Opus 68. The song tells of a young Indian girl's loss of her sweetheart who has died in battle. The first verse and chorus are:

There once lived an Indian maid, A shy little prairie maid, Who sang all day a love song gay, As on the plains she'd while away the day. She loved a warrior bold, This shy little maid of old, But brave and gay he rode one day To battle far away. Now the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing, The breeze is sighing, the night bird's crying, For afar 'neath his star her brave is sleeping, While Red Wing's weeping her heart away.

Red Wing (born Lillian Margaret St. Cyr, February 13, 1884March 12, 1974) was an American actress of the silent era. She and her husband James Young Deer have been dubbed by some as the first Native American Hollywood "power couple." She was born into the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska on the Winnebago Reservation.

Lillian attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania and later moved to Washington, D.C. to work as a domestic servant for Kansas Senator Chester I. Long and his wife, where she met and married J. Younger Johnson ( James Young Deer) on April 9, 1906. Young Deer was a Euro-African American with Delaware Indian ancestry (according to St. Cyr) and was of member of the Nanticoke tribe. A native of Washington, D.C., Young Deer served in the Navy during the Spanish–American War. After his marriage to Lilian, the couple performed a Western act in various venues around New York City and Philadelphia. In 1908, Lillian appeared in two short film, Kalem's The White Squaw and Lubin's The Falling Arrow. In the summer of 1909, they worked as technical advisers and as extras for two films directed by D.W. Griffith. Lilian also appeared in Vitagraph's Red Wing's Gratitude that fall. Concurrently, however, they worked for Bison films (New York Motion Picture Co.), which relocated from New York to Edendale, in the fall of 1909.

St. Cyr is best known for her lead role in The Squaw Man (1914) by producer/director Cecil B. DeMille and co-directed by Oscar Apfel, released in 1914. This was followed by a role with cowboy star Tom Mix in In the Days of the Thundering Herd (1914) and another in Fighting Bob (1915). The 1916 version of Ramona featured St. Cyr as Ramona's mother.

From 1908-1921, St. Cyr performed in more than 35 short Western films.

She retired from acting in the 1920s and settled in New York City. She was buried in St. Augustine Cemetery in Nebraska.

The Red Wing (song) was supposedly connected with and often performed by her, although film historians question this.