Shenandoah: A Song History
No one knows who made "Shenandoah." The Traditional Ballad Index lists the author as unknown, files the song as Roud 324 and gives "Across the Wide Missouri" and "The Rolling River" among its other titles.[1] Most versions have a chorus about a rolling river and the wide Missouri.[1] The story behind them concerns a white man, in some versions a trader, who loves the daughter of a Native chief named Shenandoah but belongs to another world and leaves.[1][2] Even the name is uncertain. The Ballad Index notes a suggested Algonquian origin meaning star daughter, then notes that the Algonquian language maps its editor consulted do not cover the Shenandoah region.[1]
“Snags (sunken trees on the Missouri),” print after Karl Bodmer. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.
Its beginnings are still debated. Paul Clayton thought the older versions probably came from American or Canadian voyageurs. The notes of the Exmouth Shanty Men allow that the song may have started among early American rivermen, or on land before it went to sea. They date it to at least the 1820s and note that the collector Hugill described three versions.[2] Ballad of America thinks French Canadian fur traders the likeliest source. Both it and Wikipedia mention a proposed link between the chief and the Oneida leader Skenandoa, but neither shows that the link is certain.[3][4] Both also record a version printed in 1876 in The New Dominion Monthly, in an article by Captain Robert Chamblet Adams.[3][4] Ballad of America calls this its first appearance in writing and adds that Adams said he had first heard the song around 1850.[3]
At sea, "Shenandoah" became a capstan shanty, sung by crews as they heaved up the anchor.[2][4] The collector Terry ranked it among the most famous shanties, and Cecil Sharp observed that its tune never kept a regular rhythm.[2] Collectors found it in Massachusetts, the Midwest, Nebraska, Maritime Canada, Ireland and St. Vincent, where singers added verses about whaling.[1] Bone, in Capstan Bars, wrote that its melody was so beautiful that it "curbed the license of wild singers in the text."[1] On shore it turned up in Edward Harrigan's 1901 book The Mulligans, sung by picnickers in New York, and in modern folk recordings such as Paul Clayton's 1956 album for Tradition.[1][2] Stephen Seifert includes it in his mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[5]
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