Trickster stories are found among peoples throughout the world, including Native Americans and Africans. Given the interaction between African Americans and Native Americans, it is very possible that both group's stories melding together and resulted in the stories written by Joel Chandler Harris.

I recall reading a West African folktale from Nigeria that is exactly like Br'er Rabbit and the tar baby-without the dialect I might add. Unfortunately, I can't find which book or books it is in.

However, see this quote from Paul Radin's "African Folktales & Sculpture" {Pantheon Books, 1964;15-16}

" Both types [trickster and culture hero type tales] are encountered all over the rest of the aborginal world ; tehy are developed most richly, perhaps where assuredly politial events were more than normally contributory. The existence and prominent of terickster and culture-hero tales among the Bushmen indicates that they must once have been found in other parts of Africa too. Indeed, those Bantu tribes where there is no division into stratified classes, where, in consequence, there is no tendency for the activities of the ahthor-raconteur to become closely identified with the interests of a leader at times exalted to the rank of ruler, these do actually possess a trickster-culture hero, namely the Hare. His creative function has, it is true, disappeared. But this holds for many American Indian tribes as well...

-snip-

Paul Radin then proceeds to provide an example of Hare hiding in a field to catch the Antelope who was stealing his peas.

As an aside, I'd like to mention that, though the signifying Monkey is immortalized in a number of African American folksongs, the most popular trickster in the Caribbean and the USA is the Ghanaian spider man , Kwaku Anansi {"Ananse"; "Anancy" "Aunt Nancy"}. These are hundreds of Anansi trickster stories. And most of these stories originally included a song.