Annotation:One Old Indian Two Old Squaws
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ONE OLD INDIAN, TWO OLD SQUAWS. American, Air. The tune was in the repertory of Bill Graves (1917-2001), a fiddler and mountain dulcimer player from Conway, near Lebanon, in the Missouri Ozarks. He introduces it on his recording: "One old Indian, two old squaws, all shaggin' out for Arkansas." Graves was proud of his own Cherokee heritage. His grandfather, John Mawhee, was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian who served as a scout in the Union Army during the Civil War in southwestern Missouri. He also played the fiddle and dulcimer, and constructed lap dulcimers. According to Howard Marshall (Play Me Something Quick and Devilish (2013, p. 229), Mawhee injured his leg in the fighting and was imperfectly set, resulting in one leg being shorter than the other which caused the musician to limp. He added a cane handle to the end of the instrument, which then served double duty as a source of music and an aid to walking; Mawhee called it his "Indian walking cane." There is a photograph of him playing the fiddle in Marshall's book.
Variants of the title appear in other fiddlers' repertories. Kentucky fiddler Hiram Stamper's "Indian Squaw (2)" is an instrumental of a song whose title was taken down by the field recorder (Bob Butler) as "Two Indians and One Little Squaw," and Stamper sang to the first strain of his tune: "Way down yonder on the Arkansas, two old Indians and one old squaw, sitting on the banks of the Arkansas." Jeff Titon (Old-Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes, 2001) finds a song called "The Bank of the Arkanses," transcribed from the singing of Mrs. Minta Morgan (Bells, Texas) by Lomax & Lomax to contain the similar lines: "Two little Indians and one old squaw; Settin' on the bank of the Arkansas" (the melody is the same as Clyde Davenport's "Cornstalk Fiddle and a Shoestring Bow," notes Titon).
Source for notated version:
Printed sources:
Recorded sources: Missouri State Old Time Fiddlers Association 301-CD, Bill Graves - "Sugar in the Coffee" (1997). Rounder 0436, Bill Graves - "Traditional Fiddle Music of the Ozarks, vol. 2: On the Springfield Plain" (2000).
See also listing at:
Hear Bill Graves recording on youtube.com [1]