The "hollers" of the Negroes nearly all have been lost. Courlander heard them in Nigeria, Cuba and Haiti.
Sometimes they evolved into a kind of song or series of statements, more than a simple message or indication of location. (such as some of the white hollers on the Rounder release cited by Masato).
Courlander cites this one from Alabama:

Ay-oh-hoh!
I'm goin' up the river!
Oh, couldn't stay here!
For I'm goin' home!
So bad, I'm so far from home!
And I can't get theree for walkin'!
I want to go home so bad partner!
I'm goin' up the river but I can't stay here!
I'm goin' home, woh!
I won't get back till July and August.
I won't get there till fall.
My boat up the river.
But I can't stay here, want to go back!
Oh Lord!

Frederick Law Olmstead, 1853, was impressed by one he heard in South Carolina from a loading gang by the railroad.

"Suddenly one raised a such a sound as I never heard before: a long, loud musical shout, rising and falling and breaking into falsetto, his voice ringing through the woods in the clear, frosty night air, like a bugle call. As he finished, the melody was caught up by another, and then, another, and then, by several in chorus... After a few minutes I could hear one urging the rest to come to work again, and soon he stepped towards the cotton bales, saying, "Come, brederen come; let's go at it; come now, eoho! roll away! eeoho-eeoho-eeoho-weeio-i! - and the rest taking it up as before, in a few moments they all had their shoulders to a bale of cotton, and were rolling it up the embankment."
F. L. Olmstead, 1856, "A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States in the Years 1853-1854, with Remarks on Their Economy."
Quoted in D. J. Epstein, 1977, "Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, Black Music to the Civil War," p. 182.