Guest, you take your origins and I'll take mine.

Sorefingers, don't know about a native American origin, but you have the correct river.

You are both right and wrong about the character of the area. Many old farms there (See Handbook of Texas), and it was a prominent outlet for cotton and cattle from northeast Texas to New Orleans by steamboat. Red River Co. had 8500 residents by 1860; Bowie County has 2600 slaves and 2400 whites in 1860 (cotton and corn the main crops); Montague County was still the wild west, having Indian troubles in 1860, but by the 1880s there were 11000 farmers and cattlemen.   

No one has ever located a copy of the supposed Kerrigan song of 1896, first mentioned by Sandburg. It doesn't seem to exist. See thread 66800: In the Bright