Lost Indian: A Song History

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"Lost Indian" names no single melody: the Traditional Tune Archive calls it a floating title and files it under a numbered run of separate tunes, some musically unrelated to the rest.[1][2] Its first entry, drawing on Guthrie Meade and Mark Wilson, says the name gathered around tunes played in the cross-tuned AEac# fiddle tuning more than around any shared melody, and it places its own A-major reel in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas.[1] Fiddlers tied to that version include Kentucky's Ed Haley, heard on Rounder's Parkersburg Landing (1976), along with Eck Robertson and Texas fiddler Benny Thomasson, both issued on County albums.[1] According to the Archive, fiddlers sometimes whooped as they played, a stereotyped evocation of a Native American lost in the wilderness.[1]

Gray watercolor of a broad river between wooded hills with a steamboat

Lefevre James Cranstone, The Ohio River near Wheeling, West Virginia, watercolor and gouache, 1859–60. The Ohio River in West Virginia, a region where the tune was played; it has no connection to the tune.

A different "Lost Indian," in D major in most versions, is described by the Archive as a local melody of Surry County, North Carolina, which Kenny Baker's fiddling carried to bluegrass players.[3] The Archive likens it to "Cherokee Shuffle," and its entry for that tune says Tommy Jackson is generally credited with turning Tommy Magness's D-major "Lonesome Indian" into the A-major "Cherokee Shuffle," adding that the Magness tune later also went by "Lost Indian."[3][4] Yet another tune of the name is traced by the Archive to Texas fiddler John Wills, father of Bob Wills.[5]

Larry Conger arranges a "Lost Indian" for mountain dulcimer in Hoedowns And Breakdowns, his Fingers Of Steel tab collection of danceable fiddle tunes, where it sits beside "Cherokee Shuffle"; the listing does not say which melody of the name he follows.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Lost Indian"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Lost Indian (1) (The)".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Lost Indian (10)".
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Lost Indian (3)".
  4. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Cherokee Shuffle".
  5. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Lost Indian (2)".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, Hoedowns And Breakdowns".
  7. Image: Lefevre James Cranstone, The Ohio River near Wheeling, West Virginia, watercolor and gouache, 1859–60. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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