There was a brief remark in the early posts of this thread about the Uncle Remus stories. While Joel Chandler Harris (apparently) collected the stories and published them as his own (I say this off the top of my head, without having delved back into this subject for a long time) there are several possible origins to consider. The Choctaw nation from Mississippi have a strong claim on those trickster stories. The Trail of Tears swept up many southeastern tribes during that relocation to the Oklahoma Territory, and as with some of the Cherokee who vanished deep into the mountains to avoid removal, many Choctaw disappeared into the bayous and swamps to eek out very modest lives, commingled with escaped slaves. Only in later years did the Oklahoma branches of those tribes (to name only two of the many who were moved) make a effort to formally reconnect with the home territory. Stories and cultures mingled, and given a little time, I can pull up some citations to offer as a starting point for anyone wanting to pursue this subject further. (I touched on this in my master's thesis on American Indian literature, so the sources aren't too difficult to dig out.)

The point being, that songs, like stories, have legs, and they move around. Recognizing them in their various versions is one of the delights of scholarship.

I opened this thread because I wanted to see what Azizi's first post at Mudcat looked like, in the context of a different discussion. Such is the way with Mudcat threads--they suck you in!

SRS