The Word Hoosier; John Finley: Indiana Historical Society Publications, Volume IV, Number 2Dunn, Jacob Piatt
History
The Word Hoosier; John Finley: Indiana Historical Society Publications, Volume IV, Number 2
Dunn, Jacob Piatt
Finley, John, 1797-1866; Hoosier (Nickname)
The appellation of Hooshier has been used in many of the
Western States, for several years, to designate, in a good
natural way, an inhabitant of our sister state of Indiana.
Ex-Governor Ray has lately started a newspaper in Indiana,
which he names "The Hoshier" (sic). Many of our ingenious
native philologists have attempted, though very
unsatisfactorily, to explain this somewhat singular term.
Mordecai M. Noah, in the late number of his Evening Star,
undertakes to account for it upon the faith of a rather
apocryphal story of a recruiting officer, who was engaged
during the last war, in enlisting a company of HUSSARS, whom by
mistake he unfortunately denominated Hooshiers. Another
etymologist tells us that when the state of Indiana was being
surveyed, the surveyors, on finding the residence of a
squatter, would exclaim "_Who's here_,"--that this exclamation,
abbreviated to _Hooshier_ was, in process of time, applied as a
distinctive appellation to the original settlers of that state,
and, finally to its inhabitants generally. Neither of these
hypotheses are deserving any attention. The word Hooshier is
indebted for its existence to that once numerous and unique,
but now extinct class of mortals called the Ohio Boatmen.--In
its original acceptation it was equivalent to "Ripstaver,"
"Scrouger," "Screamer," "Bulger," "Ring-tailroarer," and a
hundred others, equally expressive, but which have never
attained to such a respectable standing as itself. By some
caprice which can never be explained, the appellation Hooshier
became confined solely to such boatmen as had their homes upon
the Indiana shore, and from them it was gradually applied to
all the Indianians, who acknowledge it as good naturedly as the
appellation of Yankee--Whatever may have been the original
acceptation of Hooshier this we know, that the people to whom
it is now applied, are amongst the bravest, most intelligent,
most enterprising, most magnanimous, and most democratic of the
Great West, and should we ever feel disposed to quit the state
in which we are now sojourning, our own noble Ohio, it will be
to enroll ourselves as adopted citizens in the land of the
"HOOSHIER."--Cincinnati Republican.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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