I agree that hasty generalizations are risky, and apparently it is too early in the Reno discovery to come to definitive conclusions, however, my point of the possible scenerio of African-Americans in an international setting isn't contrary to your response.

Authors like Rudolp Lapp, Jack D Forbes and Quintard Taylor are perhaps more reliable than Willuam L. Katz with regards to Blacks in old west mining, and as of yet, I have never heard of Reno as being a Black mining town, but the CNN article at least inferred a Black community.

The thing I like to remind myself of the most is that the African effect on the American West goes beyond the African-American and includes Blacks from Mexico, Nicaragua, South America, Hawaii, Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe.

Finally without drawing a conclusion, the Tabasco sauce bottle could prove to show a very old cultural thread associated with African Americans, much older than the advent of the Blues.