Nigel:

Most of what you point to can be paralleled in other versions of Laredo.

"Give a wild whoop as you carry along" is prolly one of the more inept attempts to re-write (England to the States):

    Play the dead march as you carry me on
   
I'd absolutely love for the cowboy in this version to be Amerindian. As you say, there's nothing in the text that rules it out, but equally, pace what you point to, there's nothing that rules it in.

And we seem to be drifting off the Nation.

What's being kicked-up is magic, but my neck's still on the line over that term.

:-(

Robin

(Actually, "gone to its Giver" might be a crux -- I can't find this in any other version I've got on disk, but if I were betting -- betting being easier than doing serious research [g] -- I'd type this as a reflex of 19thC American Transcendentalism (Emerson and Thoreau)rather than Amerindian.

... thinking about it, the occurrence of "gone to its Giver" -- Hiawatha? -- might be an index of just +when+ this particlar re-write emerged -- post-Longfellow?

So the +reference+ in the text has to be pre-1845, but it would have been written down/put together, about fifty years later.

Make any sense?

R2