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Two months later at the Indiana Republican State Convention in Indianapolis, an “equestrian burlesque team” called the “Earthquakes” lampooned the “sack of Lawrence” in a “dramatic spectacle,” and featured the principal characters led by the devil in a red suit and a smokestack made to look like a cannon with a small boy inside shooting firecrackers. This song, set to the tune of “The British Grenadiers,” evidently was part of the show. The spelling “Buchaneers” ridicules the newly nominated Democratic presidential candidate James Buchanan, known as “Old Buck.” Although eastern newspapers exaggerated Atchison's role in the Lawrence affair, his actions and his stance on slavery issues during his senatorial tenure made him a national symbol of pro-slavery efforts. “Quindaro Hornpipe,” the tune that follows “Atchison's Buchaneers,” is one Dave and Cathy heard on a recording by New England fiddlers Allan Block and George Wilson with the name being at least as obscure as the tune itself. Many residents of Kansas City, Kan., however, know an area of their city by that name. Quindaro was an abolitionist town founded in 1857 by Abelard Guthrie and Charles Robinson on the Missouri River six miles above the mouth of the Kansas River. Land for the town was obtained from the Wyandotte Indians, and Guthrie named the town after his wife, who was a member of the tribe. Her name is reportedly a common Wyandotte word meaning, “bunch of little sticks,” translated by abolitionist rhetoric to “in Union there is strength.” The town's history is quite short. Most of its men joined the Union army in 1863, leaving many buildings vacant and a solitary family residing there. The earliest publication of the tune we have found is in Elias Howe's “Leviathan Collection” in 1858 in Boston. Howe published about 200 different tune collections and his store was a center for music in Boston during the Civil War era. Given the direct link between Massachusetts abolitionists and the Kansas territory, and the widespread publicity in northern and eastern presses concerning Quindaro's founding, it is a good guess that some musician in Massachusetts was inspired by the news of the day to write and/or name a tune for the new town, perhaps for a minstrel show or other stage production. Quindaro had regular dances in its early days, so it is possible the tune originated in this region, although the tune does not seem to be in the regional repertoire of this century.
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