The song along with some historical notes about the Balck Hills goldrush of 1874 can also be found in Songs of the Great American West by Irwin Silber. Silber credits the text to a broadside sheet (around 1876) found in the collection of the Society of California Pioneers. The sheet carried the inscription "as sung by Dick Brown" (see BArry's post) and "published and sold wholesale and retail by Bell & Co. San Fancisco" The Black Hills gold rush was mostly a con game. there was just enough gold to make it work. Gen. George Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills and his report that there was gold there was spread very quickly especially by the entrepreneurs who wanted to start a gold rush. The business panic of 1873 provided the perfect set-up. The real money was made by the people "who transported miners, sold them supplies, fed them, sold them liquor, gambled them for their dust, banked their wealth, entertained them and bedded them down for a night or a trick." Cheyenne became the jumping off place for the railroads. Cattlemen began to drive their herds to Cheyenne ("Goodbye Old Paint I'm leaving Cheyenne" "..git along little dogies, you know that Wyoming will be your new home") to support the boomtown and ship beef to Washington and Oregon. In a couple years the Souix lost their sacred land Custer lost his all ("General Custer told me, we're going for a ride, way down by the Bighorn River where the water is deep and wide.")

rich r