ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 46 (Winter 1987)

The Arkansas Traveller:

Southwest Humor on Canvas

By SARAH BROWN

American Studies Program, George Washington University

Washington, D.C. 20052

During the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, the Arkansas Traveller, in tale, fiddle tune, lyrical song, and pictorial image, was a widespread piece of popular culture. The pictorial image of traveller on horseback and fiddling squatter before a log cabin was created by Edward Payson Washbourne in his painting(ca.1855). It was based on the humorous tale of travel and encounter related by Colonel Sandford Faulkner. Using realistic but passing scenes of the Arkansas frontier, Washbourne created what in 1860 the Little Rock True Democrat called "a truly southern picture by a southern artist." (1) As the tale, tune, and song spread throught the nation during the second half of the nineteenth century, so did the pictorial image. It was represented not only on the cover of songbooks and sheet music, but also in two engravings, one produced in 1859 by Leopold Grozelier, the other by Currier and Ives in 1870. In popular interpretation, the traveller was a "civilized" easterner who had the great misfortune of traveling among the backward inhabitants of Arkansas. By the turn of the century, Arkansas sensitive to this interpretation, blamed the image for doing "untold injury to the good name of the state and her people."(2) As the image spread beyond the region its interpretation changed. The

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*The author is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at George Washington University, Washington, D.C., and a past member of the board of Directors of the Arkansas Historical Association.

1 "Death of Edward Payson Washbourne," Little Rock (Ark.) True Democrat, March 31, 1860.

2 William F. Pope, Early Days in Arkansas: Being for the most part the Personal Recollections of an Old Settler (Little Rock, 1895), 231.