Banks of the Sacramento

Banks of the Sacramento is an American heaving shanty from the mid 19th century. This “gold-rush” shanty is an adaptation of Stephen Foster’s well-known minstrel song Camptown Races, which was published in 1850:

Camptown ladies, sing dis song, Doo da, Doo da! Camptown race track five miles long, Doo da, doo da day! Ch: Gwine to run all night, Gwine to run all day, I’ll bet my money on de bob-tailed nag, Somebody bet on de bay!

Go down dar wid my hat caved in, Come back home wid my pockets full ob tin.

De long-tailed filly and de big black hoss Dey fly de track and dey both cut across,

De blind hoss stickin’ in a big mud hole, Can’t touch bottom wid a ten-foot pole.

Old muley cow come out on de track, De bob he fling her ober his back,

Den fly along like a railroad car Runnin’ a race wid a shootin’-star.

De sorrel hoss he’s got a cough, An’ his rider’s drunk in de old hay-lof’.

Dar’s fo’teen hosses in dis race, I’m snug in de saddle an’ got a good brace,

De bob-tail hoss she can’t be beat, Runnin’ around in a two-mile heat.

I win my money on de bob-tail nag, An’ carry it home in de old tow-bag.

New Zealand sources show the song crossing the Pacific almost as soon as the gold rush began. The Māori whaler Tohi Te Marama told James Cowan (Evening Post, April 26, 1913) that as a teenager at Port Jackson around 1850 he heard the crews of ships loading for the California diggings heave up anchor to “O blow ye winds, heigh-oh, for Californy-oh! There’s plenty of gold, so I’ve been told, on the banks of Sacramento.” When gold was found in Otago the refrain was reworked. J. W. A. Marchant, who crossed from Melbourne to Port Chalmers on the Aldinga in the rush of 1863, recalled that the song of the hour, “sung night and day by the crowd of passengers,” ran “Oh, the golden land of Otago! There’s plenty of gold, so I’ve been told, in the golden land of Otago” (Evening Post, May 16, 1906).