Q,

I think you're right that a specific connection with Miramichi (however it's spelled) is doubtful. I have assumed it to just be a cliché rhyming word and, as you say, a piece of flotsam in the chanteyman's memory banks from singing such chanteys as "Hieland Laddie"/"Donkey Riding."

Of course from my point of view (i.e. the John Kanaka discussion) I don't feel much need to reconcile the lack of continuity between Cherokee and Miramichi. If I had to propose a scenario --mind you, completely speculative, I'd say that the song came around in the 1830s during the more publicized incidents of Cherokee struggle, by the Alabama hoosiers, and that the Mirimichi line came into it either from the other cotton songs you name, or later on in its life as a chanteyman's cliché.

Gibb