"De Boatman Dance" - sheet music, pix, etc.

De Boatman Dance: An Ethiopian Ballad Arranged for the Spanish Guitar by Philip Ernst. New York: C. G. Christman, 1844.


Available on line in several versions:

• Library of Congress, Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music ...
  
• Arr. for piano, "De Boatmen's Dance: An Original Banjo Melody by Old Dan D. Emmit, in collection of Dan Emmit's songs Levy Collection, Johns Hopkins

Like other early minstrel tunes, it was in the oral tradition before Dan Emmit adapted it for the stage ... Andrew Kuntz in Fiddler's Companion has this:

BOAT(S)MAN [2]. AKA and see "Sailing Down the River on the O‑hi‑o," "Ohio River," "Boatman Dance." Old‑Time, Breakdown. USA; W.Va., Pa. A Major (Krassen, Phillips): D Major (Johnson): G Major (Spandaro). Standard tuning. AABBC: ABCC (Johnson): AABBCC (Phillips). The fiddle tune is derived from the minstrel piece credited to Dan Emmett called "De Boatmen Dance" or "Dance, Boatman, Dance;" the tune (words below), according to some accounts, was first heard in performance in Boston in 1843. Emmett published it in that year, advertising it as "An Original Banjo Melody." The tune appears in many American and even English songsters of the 19th and early 20th centuries; Scott (1926) prints it as "Sung by the Ethiopian Serenaders." Both Nathan and Cauthen (1990) assert the melody was in folk currency before the minstrel era, and that it made its way back to folk currency in the fiddle tradition after popularization by minstrels; this is probably true, for it was in print (as "Ohio River") in George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels, volume IV (Baltimore, 1839) -- associated with Ohio River boatmen -- before it was played on the minstrel stage. See also "Boatman's Dance" for version of the tune in the morris dance tradition and "Little Rabbit" for a related old-time version.

... with reference to two pictures ... George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879). Raftsmen Playing Cards and Flatboat Fiddler. From Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspapter, v. 50, April, 1880.

http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/ballads/BMRF566.html
The Ballad Index Copyright $TrueYear by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.

Wikipedia article on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minstrel_show#cite_note-124 Minsterel Show notes that "... when the sound era of cartoons began in the late 1920s, early animators such as Walt Disney gave characters like Mickey Mouse (who already resembled blackface performers) a minstrel-show personality; the early Mickey is constantly singing and dancing and smiling" - cited to Sacks, Howard L.; Sacks, Judith (1993), Way up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, p. 158.