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The Word “Hoosier” The Word “Hoosier” by Jeffrey Graf Reference Services Department Herman B Wells Library Indiana University Libraries - Bloomington I can tell you from experience that if you mention this in a book 250 people from Indiana will write to you with 250 different explanations and the unanimous view that you are a dunce. (Bill Bryson) “Indiana is the Hoosier State, inhabited by Hoosiers, whatever they may be,” reads in part an article that appeared in the March 13, 1875 issue of the British magazine Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts. (“American Nicknames,” 1875, p. 171) A century later, the philosopher Henry Babcock Veatch, an Indiana native, spoke at a symposium dinner honoring him. During his address, “Can philosophy Ever be a Thing for Hoosiers?” he remarked, “I can hear our chairman, Wilfried Ver Eecke, muttering to himself, ‘But who or what, in God’s name, is a Hoosier?’” (Veatch, 1983, p. 1) Michael Wilkerson in his essay “Indiana Origin Stories” asks, “What in the world is a Hoosier?” (Wilkerson, 1989, p. 13) On the eve of Super Bowl XLI between the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts (Colts 29, Bears 17), Charles Leroux put the question in his Chicago Tribune article of January 30, 2007, “So, what the heck is a Hoosier?” They are not alone in their puzzlement, rhetorical or not. What, then, is a hoosier? Where did the word come from? Or as Mario Pei wondered, “Who first inflicted Hoosiers on the people of Indiana…?” (Pei, 1967, p. 131) Like barnacles, a thick crust of speculation has gathered over the word “Hoosier” to explain the origin of Indiana’s nickname. Popular theories, often sincerely advanced (and sometimes not), form a rich and often amusing body of folklore. Those theories include “Who’s here?” as a question to unknown visitors or to the inhabitants of a country cabin; Hussar, from the fiery European mounted troops; “Huzza!” exclaimed after victory in a fight; Husher, a brawny man capable of stilling all opponents; Hoosa, an Indian word for corn; Hoose, a term for a disease of cattle, sheep and goats that gives the animals a wild sort of look; and the evergreen Who’s ear? asked while toeing torn-off ears lying on the tavern floor the morning after a brawl. Good evidence suggests that “Hoosier” was a term of contempt and opprobrium common in the upland South and used to denote a rustic, a bumpkin, a countryman, a roughneck, a hick or an awkward, uncouth or unskilled fellow. Although the word’s derogatory meaning has faded, it can still be heard in its original sense, albeit less frequently than its cousins “Redneck” and “Cracker.” From the upland South “Hoosier” moved into the Ohio Valley, where it was applied to the presumably unsophisticated inhabitants of Southern Indiana. Later it expanded to include all residents of the state and gradually lost its original, potent connotation of coarseness in manners, appearance and intellect. As for the word itself, it may derive from the Saxon word “hoo” meaning promontory or cliff or ridge or rise or hill. Jacob Piatt Dunn, a thorough scholar of the word, believes in a Saxon beginning, and such a meaning survives in various place names in England. There is some sense in the notion, too, that those who uttered the insult and those to whom it was applied (and who understood it) came primarily from British stock. The unusual (ier or sier) ending has always been difficult to explain. Might it be from “scir” the old form of “shire?” The Hoo Shire would then be the Hill Country, the High Places or the Mountain Region. Would that meaning then extend to those who dwelt in the hills, making them the “hooscirs” and later the “Hoosiers,” mountaineers, highlanders or hillbillies by another name? Can that be right? Or is there another explanation? Maybe more than one? 250? Speculation Begins Speculation about the origin of the word Hoosier as a nickname for residents of Indiana began in print as early as 1833. In the October 26, 1833 issue of the Indiana Democrat appeared an item reprinted from the Cincinnati Republican. HOOSHIER 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 2 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 of 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 (Dunn, 1907, p. 15-16) The same item, also credited to the Cincinnati Republican, appeared in the Madison Republican and Banner (Madison, Indiana) of October 31, 1833. The Indiana American (Brookville, Indiana) printed it on November 15, 1833. Later, the Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana) carried it (without credit) on March 1, 1838. Jacob Piatt Dunn Perhaps the most serious student of the word “Hoosier” was Jacob Piatt Dunn, Jr., journalist, prospector, attorney, politician, historian, state librarian, and recording secretary of the Indiana Historical Society from 1886 until his death in 1924. In a series of works, he provides an exhaustive and detailed consideration of the term. His first contribution, “Facts Regarding the Origin of the Word Hoosier” (subtitled: “The Matter Is Here Carefully Considered, as Searchers May Have Been Heretofore Following an Entirely False Scent”), appeared in the Indianapolis News on August 23 (Part I) and August 30, 1902 (Part II). In 1905 the Indiana Magazine of History published in its second issue his “Origin of the Word Hoosier” with an editor’s note. So far as we know Jacob P. Dunn is the only one who has made anything like a thorough study of the question, and because his conclusions seem to us the most reasonable theory in the field, and, in addition, are but little known, we think they will be of interest here. (Dunn, 1905, p. 86) The editors further announce, “The entire study in a revised form will probably be published before very long in the collections of the Indiana Historical Society.” It was. In September, 3 1907, “The Word Hoosier” appeared as Indiana Historical Society Publications, Volume IV, Number 2. In 1911 he published a short update on his research, and his efforts as a whole became part of Volume II of Indiana and Indianans: A History of Aboriginal and Territorial Indiana and the Century of Statehood (1919). Jacob Piatt Dunn Frontispiece, Indiana and Indianans Dunn accurately writes that the 1833 article from the Cincinnati Republican covers “most of the ground that has since been occupied” only ten months after the publication of Finley’s poem “The Hoosier’s Nest.” (Dunn, 1907, p. 16) He carefully explores that “occupied ground” in The Word Hoosier, a detailed examination of the term, which nearly every serious researcher cites. Most of the suggested theories he dismisses with ease, but he finds three features they have in common: 1. They are alike in the idea that the word was first applied to a rough, boisterous, uncouth, illiterate class of people, and that the word originally implied this character. 2. They are alike in the idea that the word come from the South, or was first applied by Southern people. 3. They are alike in the idea that the word was coined for the purpose of designating Indiana people, and was not in existence before it was applied to them. (Dunn, 1907, p. 18-19) The third characteristic, he observes, is true for many of the explanations, but untrue of the word itself, for it had long been used in the south as a derogatory term for a rough countryman. His correspondents assured him, too, that the term continued in use and meaning at the time of his research, without reference to Indiana. 4 Dunn does an admirable job surveying the various theories about the word “hoosier.” He also frankly admits that the “real problem of the derivation of the word ‘hoosier,’ is not a question of the origin of a word formed to designate the State of Indiana and its people, but of the origin of a slang term widely in use in the South, signifying an uncouth rustic.” (Dunn, 1907, p.
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