Furthermore, if a person who came to a house called "Who's yere?" what cause would there be for calling the people who lived in the house "who's yeres?" There is neither evidence nor reason to support it. But there is still a stronger reason for discarding these theories, and most others. To produce the change of a word or term by corruption, there must be practical identity of sound and accent. It was natural enough for the Indiana pioneers to convert "au poste" into "Opost." It was natural enough for the New Mexican settlers to change "Jicarilla" to "Hickory." It was natural enough for the Colorado cowboys to transform "Purgatoire river" to "Picketwire river." But there is scant possibility of changing "husher," or "who's yere"--as it would probably be spoken--into "hoosh-er." This consideration has led to the suggestion that the expression from which the word came was "who is yer?" but there is nothing to support this. The early settlers did not use "is" for "are" but usually pronounced the latter "air." And they did not say "yer" for "you," though they often used it for "your." Another theory, almost as popular as these, derives the word from "hussar," and this theory, in its various forms, harks back to a Col. John Jacob Lehmanowsky, who served under Napoleon, and afterwards settled in Indiana, where he became widely known as a lecturer on the Napoleonic wars. The tradition preserved in his family is that once while in Kentucky he became engaged in a dispute with some natives, and sought to settle the matter by announcing that he was a hussar. They understood him to say that he was a "hoosier," and thereafter applied that name to everybody from Indiana. This theory has several shapes, one being presented by the Rev. Aaron Wood, the pioneer preacher, thus: The name "hoosier" originated as follows: When the young men of the Indiana side of the Ohio river went to Louisville, the Kentucky men boasted over them, calling them "New Purchase Greenies," claiming to be a superior race, composed of half horse, half alligator, and tipped off with snapping turtle. These taunts produced fights in the market house and streets of Louisville. On one occasion a stout bully from Indiana was victor in a fist fight, and having heard Colonel Lehmanowsky lecture on the "Wars of Europe," who always gave martial prowess to the German Hussars in a fight, pronouncing hussars "hoosiers" the Indianian, when the Kentuckian cried "enough," jumped up and said: "I am a Hoosier," and hence the Indianians were called by that name. This was its true origin. I was in the State when it occured.[8]