Doors guitarist Robby Krieger came up with the guitar riff. The lyrics were based on two of Jim Morrison's poems, one called Abortion Stories, which is where the bloody images came from.
This song was written in the studio. After Krieger got the guitar riff, Jim Morrison came up with the lines, "She came, she came, she came, just about the break of day." Their producer, Paul Rothchild, wanted to fill out the lyric, so he and Morrison when through Jim's notebooks and found the poems to create the lyrics.
The lyrics about the Indians refer to an auto accident involving a group of Indians that Morrison's family came across on the highway. Morrison, who was a child at the time, felt that the ghosts of the Indians took up residence in his soul. This scene is portrayed at the beginning of Oliver Stone's movie, The Doors.
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