Thanks to the information noted by Jim Dixon, I believe more strongly than ever that "wild goose nation" in the "Old Gray Goose" song and perhaps other songs was a referent for Indian land. I think that this referent became one for more than one place, meaning any place where Indians lived who would accept runaway slaves.

It's possible that the African Americans of those times used the term "wild geese" as a "totem" for those places which would bring to mind the song about the unconquerable gray goose.

There are a number of online references about Black people who were enslaved living with Native Americans. See, for example, this excerpt from this Wikepedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Indians


"...In South Carolina, colonists became so concerned about the possible threat posed by the mixed African and Native American population that was arising as runaway Africans escaped to the Native Americans that they passed a new law in 1725. This law stipulated a fine of 200 pounds on anyone who brought a slave to the frontier regions of the colony. In 1751 the colony of South Carolina found it necessary to issue another law, warning that having Africans in proximity to Native Americans was deemed detrimental to the security of the colony.

In 1726 the British governor of colonial New York exacted a promise from the Iroquois Confederacy to return all runaway slaves who had joined up with them. This same promise was extracted from the Huron tribe in 1764 and from the Delaware tribe in 1765.[10] Despite their promises, the tribes never returned any escaped slaves..[10] They continued to provide a safe refuge for escaped slaves. In 1763 during Pontiac's Native American uprising a Detriot resident reported that Native Americans killed whites but were "saving and caressing all the Negroes they take." He worried lest this might "produce an insurrection." Chief Joseph Brant's Mohawks in New York welcomed runaway slaves and encouraged intermarriage.[10] Native American adoption systems knew no color line and accepted the breathless fugitives as sisters and brothers.[10] Woodson's notion of an escape hatch notion proved correct: Native American villages welcomed fugitives, and even served as stations on the Underground Railroad.[10]"