Buckaroo: supposed African origin

[Laurence Horn]

>On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, Gerald Cohen wrote:
>>
>>       Holloway and Vass almost certainly relied on some earlier source
>>  for their African origin of "buckaroo/buckra." One possibility is
>>  David Dalby's "Black through White: Patterns of Communication in
>>  African and the New World (Hans Wolff Memorial Lecture, 1969). I'll
>>  check this in the next day or two.
>
>The original source apppears to be the AS article _The Etymology of
>'Buckaroo'_ by Julian Mason (American Speech, Feb 1960, pp. 51-55) which
>derives the word from the Gullah word buckra (white man).
>
But would Gullah count as an African source?

L