Indian On A Stump: A Song History
"Indian on a Stump" also goes by the French title "Sauvage su' l' chicot."[1] The earliest recording found in the sources consulted here is by the Balfa Brothers, a Cajun family band from Louisiana. According to the Field Recorders' Collective, the band, built around brothers Dewey, Rodney and Will Balfa and later joined by their neighbor Hadley Fontenot on accordion, cut a 1967 single for the Swallow label that paired "Le Valse de Bambocheurs" with this tune, issued under the title "Indian on a Stomp."[2] The tune also appears, credited to Dewey Balfa & His Musical Brothers, on Ace Records' 2011 CD The Balfa Brothers Play Traditional Cajun Music, which combines two of the band's albums.[3]
Russell Lee, “Chapel and shrine on small island in Bayou Teche near Adeline, Louisiana,” photograph, September 1938. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.
The Balfas took this music well beyond Louisiana. Dewey Balfa, brought in at the last minute as a guitarist for the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, met an enthusiastic audience of thousands there; afterward he got his brothers playing again and carried their music to festivals around the world.[2] A 1977 recording of the Balfa Brothers playing "Indian on a Stump" at an event of the Brandywine Friends of Old Time Music, in G with the fiddle tuned G-D-G-B, is preserved in the Slippery Hill archive.[4] The tune is among the old-time pieces arranged in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[5]
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