Arkansas Traveler: A Song History
"Arkansas Traveler" is a fiddle tune, a comic dialogue and a famous picture all at once. In Arkansas tradition, the story begins around 1840. Col. Sandford (or Sanford) Faulkner, a planter and politician, is said to have gotten lost in the backwoods and asked for directions at a squatter's cabin[1][2]. Faulkner then reportedly turned the encounter into a party piece. In it, the questions of a traveler from outside draw only sly, evasive answers from the squatter, until the traveler wins him over with a fiddle[1][3]. The story is part of Arkansas lore rather than documented fact, and the Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes that similar "Traveller" performances were drawing crowds in Ohio before 1852. It says no one can tell for sure which came first[1].
The Arkansas Traveller, colored lithograph by Leopold Grozelier after Edward Payson Washbourne, J. H. Bufford & Co., 1859. National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Public domain (CC0).
The tune itself was printed in Cincinnati in 1847 as "The Arkansas Traveller and Rackinsac Waltz," arranged by William Cumming, with no composer named[1][2]. Several people have been credited since. Cincinnati violinist Jose Tosso (also spelled Tasso) was locally famous for his version and was reportedly heard playing it as early as 1842[1][4]. Buffalo entertainer Mose Case published a widely circulated version in 1863[1][4]. Faulkner has been credited too, but the tune may simply have come from the folk tradition[1]. Arkansas artist Edward Payson Washbourne painted the Traveler and the Squatter by 1856. An 1859 lithograph credited the story to Faulkner, and Currier & Ives later sold popular prints of the scene[1][2]. The image followed Arkansas for decades. In 1896 one writer complained that it had cost the state "millions of dollars"[1].
The piece went on record early. Len Spencer recorded the dialogue in the first decade of the 1900s[3]. On June 30, 1922, Texas fiddler Eck Robertson and Henry Gilliland recorded "Arkansaw Traveler" for Victor in New York, one of the earliest commercial recordings by country musicians[5]. That record was later among the first fifty recordings named to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry[1]. Arkansas made the tune its official state song from 1949 to 1963 and named it the state historic song in 1987[3][2].
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