Gumbo Chaff

It was part of the repertoire of early blackface performers, including Thomas D. Rice and George Washington Dixon.

He was based largely on the tall-tale riverboatsmen and frontiersmen characters that were popular in fiction during the Jacksonian Era.

"Gumbo Chaff" merged these frontier elements with stereotypes of black slaves, creating a new character who lives "On de Ohio bluff in de state of Indiana" and who "jump into [his] kiff / And .

Blackface singers would often perform "Gumbo Chaff" with a mock flatboat on stage.

[1] "De Wild Goose-Nation", a blackface song written by Dan Emmett in 1844, adapted the tune to "Gumbo Chaff", possibly with parodic intent.