Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) bread that is burnt on the outside but under-cooked inside.

1870

J.H. Beadle Life in Utah 222: Half the time our bread was ‘Missouri-bake,’ i.e., burnt on top and at the bottom, and raw in the middle.

1. a roll or wad of blank paper, cut to the same size as dollar bills, surrounded by a few real notes of high denomination.

1973		B. Phillips ‘Wobbly Dehorn Crew’ at www.utahphillips.org 🎵 Well, I fumbled in my bedroll for a little tinhorn bait, / A Missouri bankroll bigger than your fist.
2002		R.J. Thompson Panacea 43: A grease-smeared apron stuffed with what must have been a Missouri bankroll of ones and fives from generous customers.

2. also in fig. use.

1998

F. Perry in G. Plimpton Truman Capote 448: It turned out to be a Missouri bankroll, which is to say, the top three pages had typewriting on them and the rest were blank. It was for show.

(US, mainly Western) a straw mattress.

1961		R.F. Adams Old-Time Cowhand 101: ’Bout the only mattress the cowhand knowed was the one at the cheap frontier hotel, stuffed with ‘prairie feathers [=straw],’ and knowed as ‘Missouri featherbeds.’ [DARE].
1995		J. Johnston Maverick Heart 255: Freddy slept near the fireplace on a Missouri featherbed — which of course involved no feathers at all, but was merely a mattress filled with straw ticking over a wooden frame.

(US) a mule.

1926		Wood & Goddard Dict. Amer. Sl.
1935		Esquire III 69/2: The mules, incidentally, were not the famous ‘Missouri hummingbird’ variety which would soon diein that wasteland, but those Mexican animals who seem to thrive on hard work, intense heat and next to no food.
1947		S.S. Smith How to Double Your Vocabulary n.p.: A donkey or a burro is variously a Rocky Mountain canary, a Missouri hummingbird, or an Arcadian nightingale.
1960		A. Lomax Folk Songs of North America 429: That [...] critter, known to Americans variously as the barnyard yodeller, the hard-tail, the jug-head, the long-eared chum and the Missouri humming bird.

(US) a blow to the testicles.

1990

S. Morgan Homeboy 188: Only the prospect of an assault and battery charge restrained Belly from whipping a Missouri mule on the geek.

see Arkansas toothpick under Arkansas adj.