Hi, Gibb.

It's all so true. (In fact, a good deal folksong commentary is at roughly that level.)

And I always thought "Sally Brown is a bright mulatto." Ooh, my head hurts!

Note, for the little it's worth, that the 1868 text includes the "rum and tobacco" verses prominent in the U.S. army versions of many years later.

With such fragmentary first-hand evidence - the recollections of a bare handful of British and American seamen out of the thousands who sailed between, say, 1870 - we can't determine where or when the "Indian chief" version arose.

All we know on that score is that Whall believed he'd heard it around 1860 "from a Harrow boy." This is not impossible, Whall's recollection that the song figured in "old public school collections" is undoubtedly wrong. That means his association of it with the early '60s is itself doubtful.

The best we can say is for sure is that at least Whall's Indian chief lyrics (barring errors in recall) stems from a few decades before 1909, when Whall published his book.

How widespread or typical they were is another question entirely, and we one we may never be able to answer.