American Ballads and Folk Songs: page - 0644

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American Ballads and Folk Songs
and Canadian voyageurs. He gives a version of the song in which a white trader courts the daughter of Chief Shenandoah and carries her away across the Vide Missouri.' Joanna C. Colcord, in Roll and Go, has a version called 'Shenandoah,' which was used on ships after the Civil War. In The American Songbag, Carl Sandburg has 'The Wide Mizzoura,' some stanzas of which are very similar to those
given here.
"The cavalry jealously claims this song for its very own, having acquired it, no doubt, during the frontier days. Sometimes the 'would not have me for a lover' stanza is followed by one beginning, 'Because I was a wagon soldier'j but the cavalry claims this to be a field artillery intrusion and an attempt to steal its song.
"In some versions, too, we learn that after Nancy reached Kansas City, 'then she had a nigger baby'; and in the Philippines I once heard of a group that, being as mellow with liquor as the song is with age, ascribed the parentage of Nancy's baby to various individuals present—with disastrous results to the singers."