Missouri

Missouri bred the mules that hauled the American West, and the bray is the punchline.

Missouri was the center of American mule breeding through the nineteenth century, supplying Southern plantations, the Santa Fe trade, and later the armies of both world wars. The mule is the state animal. Calling one a canary sets its bray against a songbird, the same joke as Rocky Mountain canary for a burro.

Frontier humor gave the largest knife in America the daintiest name it could find.

The bowie knife collected mock genteel nicknames across the frontier, of which Arkansas toothpick is the one that survived; Missouri toothpick and California toothpick are the same joke with a different state. European travel writers helped it along with stories of men picking their teeth with foot long blades. Green's Dictionary of Slang files the Missouri version under the Arkansas entry.