Buckaroo: supposed African origin

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:16 PM +0000 3/13/03, Michael Quinion wrote:
>In the entry for "buckaroo" in RHHDAS appears the note "not from an
>African language", which is fair enough. But who put this forward
>seriously enough to require Professor Lighter to specifically
>disclaim it, and from what African source? I don't have access to the
>issues of American Speech to which he refers. Can anybody give me
>chapter and verse?
>
>--
Right, I assume there must be extensive discussion in those American
Speech articles, especially the "especially" ones mentioned, since
the only etymological speculations in the actual cites are the
reasonable (if politically incorrectly phrased) references in the
early XX century entries--"bastard Spanish", "perversion of the
Spanish _vaquero_", etc.  Given that there is no general practice
that would yield e.g. "not from Basque or Uzbek" at the _OK_ entry,
*someone* in one of those AS papers must have proposed the
out-of-Africa derivation.

Larry