since all those who knew it first-hand are dead and since it has apparently not been recorded and is not remembered by their descendants.
It is possible to get books of the songs of each of the American wars, and even presidential campaigns have produced their separate books of ballads, like the rollicking Tippecanoe minstrelsy and The Grant Songster. But you will not find a volume devoted to the songs of the great trail to Oregon, or those sung during the first two decades of settlement.
The California Trail and the forty-niners, yes. There are at least three of these: California Songster, 1855; The Gold Digger's Song Book, no date; and The Pacific Song Book, 1861. These songs were not always very refined, but they were marked by originality. In many instances, they were not merely paraphrases or adaptations, but fresh ballads springing out of new experiences. Does this mean that the gold-hunters were a group with creative outlook, while those coming out for homes in the great earlier caravans of 1843, 1844 and 1845 were not? Or did the latter likewise have a collection of original songs, which have simply been lost?
We have plenty of evidence that they sang and played the fiddle around the campfires but what, exactly, were the songs they sang? Were any of them composed en route that were popular not only with that train but with the trains that crossed later? Was there one of them spontaneously provoked by all situations—while fording the streams, from dusty throats through the alkali, in the descent of Laurel Hill?
