“Bonaparte Crossing the Rocky Mountains” is an old-time breakdown fiddle tune. Its title is most likely a homespun American reworking of “Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine” — fiddlers themselves joked that Napoleon never crossed the Rockies at all.
The tune was a favorite around the Knoxville fiddlers’ conventions and was played as well in parts of North Carolina and Kentucky. Versions survive from old-time fiddlers such as Burl Hammons, and it carries a wilder, more modal cast than its march-like cousin.
The tune endures among old-time and bluegrass fiddlers.
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