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.
Here is a presentation of the question, ten months after Finley's
publication, covering most of the ground that has since been occupied.
The "hussar" theory is carried back to the war of 1812, long before Col.
Lehmanowsky was in this country. The "who's here" theory is carried back
to the government surveys, although it is certain that there were few,
if any, "squatters" on government lands in Indiana before the surveys
were made. The "husher" theory, in embryo, is presented in the writers
theory, which is apparently conjectural, except perhaps as evidence that
the word was applied to the rather rough-looking class of flat-boatmen
who made their trips down the Ohio and Mississippi.
There has been notable tendency to locate these stories at Louisville,
and to connect them with the building of the Louisville and Portland
canal which was under construction from 1826 to 1831, inclusive. The
"husher" story is located there by several of its advocates. Another
story, of recent origin, coming from one Vanblaricum, was recounted by
Mr. George Cottman in the Indianapolis Press of February 6, 1901.
Vanblaricum claimed that while passing through southern Tennessee he met
a man named Hoosier, and this man said that a member of his family had a
contract on the construction of the Louisville and Portland canal; that
he employed his laborers from the Indiana side, and the neighbors got to
calling them "Hoosier's men," from which the name "Hoosier" came to be
applied to Indiana men generally. Vanblaricum could not give the
address of his informant, or any information tending to confirm the
story. At my request Mr. Louis Ludlow, Washington correspondent of the
Indianapolis Sentinel, made inquiry of the representatives from the
southern districts of Tennessee, and learned that none of them had ever
heard of such a story, or knew of the name "Hoosier" in his district. An
examination of the directories of Atlanta, Augusta, Baltimore,
Chattanooga, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Little Rock, Louisville, Memphis,
Nashville, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Richmond, St. Louis, St. Joseph,
Savannah, Wheeling, Wilmington, the District of Columbia, and the state
of Tennessee, failed to reveal any such name as Hoosier. As it is hardly
possible for a family name to disappear completely, we may reasonably
drop the Vanblaricum story from consideration. The same conclusion will
also apply to the story of a Louisville baker, named Hoosier, from whom
the term is sometimes said to have come. It is now known that the
occurrence of "Hoosier" as a Christian name in the minutes of an early
Methodist conference in Indiana, was the result of misspelling. The
members name was "Ho-si-er (accent on the second syllable) J. Durbin,"
and the secretary in writing it put in an extra "o." It may be mentioned
in this connection that "Hooser" is a rather common family name in the
South, and that "Hoos" is occasionally found.
One of the most interesting wild-goose chases I ever indulged in was
occasioned by a passage in the narrative of Francis and Theresa Pulszky,
entitled "White, Red and Black." The Pulskys accompanied Kossuth on his
trip through the States and visited Indianapolis in 1852. In the account
of this visit Mrs. Pulszky says:
Governor Wright is a type of the Hoosiers, and justly proud to
be one of them. I asked him wherefrom his people had got this
name. He told me that "Hoosa" is the Indian name for maize, the
principal produce of the State.
This opened a new vista. The names "Coosa" and "Tallapoosa"
came to memory. How simple! The Indiana flatboatmen taking
their loads of corn down the river were called "Hoosa men" by
the Southern Indians, and so the name originated. But a search
of Indian vocabularies showed no such name for maize or for
anything else. The nearest approaches to it are "Hoosac" and
"Housatonic," which are both probably corruptions from the same
stem, "awass," meaning beyond or further. The latter word is
supposed to be the Indian "wassatinak," which is the New
England form of the Algonquin "awassadinang," meaning beyond
the mountains.
In 1854 Amelia M. Murray visited Indianapolis, and was for a time the
guest of Governor Wright. In her book entitled "Letters from the United
States, Cuba and Canada" (page 324), she says:
Madame Pfeiffer (she evidently meant Mrs. Pulszky, for Madame
Pfeiffer did not come here and does not mention the subject)
mistook Governor Wright, when she gave from his authority
another derivation for the word "Hoosier." It originated in a
settler's exclaiming "Huzza," upon gaining the victory over a
marauding party from a neighboring State.
With these conflicting statements, I called on Mr. John C. Wright, son
of Governor Wright. He remembered the visits of the Pulszkys and Miss
Murray, but knew nothing of Madame Pfeiffer. He said: "I often heard my
father discuss this subject. His theory was that the Indiana flatboatmen
were athletic and pugnacious, and were accustomed, when on the levees of
the Southern cities, to 'jump up and crack their heels together' and
shout 'Huzza,' whence the name of 'huzza fellows.' We have the same idea
now in 'hoorah people,' or 'a hoorah time.'"
It will be noted that all these theories practically carry three
features 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 came 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.
If our primary suspicion be correct, that all the investigators and
theorists have followed some false lead from the beginning, it will
presumably be found in one of these three common features. Of the three,
the one that would more probably have been derived from assumption than
from observation is the third. If we adopt the hypothesis that it is
erroneous, we have left the proposition that the word "hoosier," was in
use at the South, signifying a rough or uncouth person, before it was
applied to Indiana; and if this were true it would presumably continue
to be used there in that sense. Now this condition actually exists, as
appears from the following evidence.
In her recent novel, "In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim," Mrs.
Frances Hodgson Burnett refers several times to one of her characters--a
boy from North Carolina--as a "hoosier." In reply to an inquiry she
writes to me:
The word "hoosier" in Tennessee and North Carolina seems to
imply, as you suggest, an uncouth sort of rustic. In the days
when I first heard it my idea was also that--in agreement with
you again--it was a slang term. I think a Tennesseean or
Carolinian of the class given to colloquialisms would have
applied the term "hoosier" to any rustic person without
reference to his belonging to any locality in particular. But
when I lived in Tennessee I was very young and did not inquire
closely into the matter.
Mrs. C. W. Bean, of Washington, Ind., furnishes me this statement:
In the year 1888, as a child, I visited Nashville, Tenn. One
day I was walking down the street with two of my aunts, and our
attention was attracted by a large number of mountaineers on
the streets, mostly from northern Georgia, who had come in to
some sort of society meeting. One of my aunts said, "What a lot
of hoosiers there are in town." In surprise I said, "Why I am a
Hoosier." A horrified look came over my aunt's face and she
exclaimed, "For the Lord's sake, child, don't let any one here
know you're a hoosier." I did not make the claim again for on
inspection the visitors proved a wild-looking lot who might be
suspected of never having seen civilization before.
Miss Mary E. Johnson, of Nashville, Tenn., gives the following
statement:
I have been familiar with the use of the word "hoosier" all my
life, and always as meaning a rough class of country people.
The idea attached to it, as I understand it, is not so much
that they are from the country, as that they are green and
gawky. I think the sense is much the same as in "hayseed,"
"jay" or "yahoo."
Hon. Thetus W. Sims, Representative in Congress from the Tenth Tennessee
district, says:
I have heard all my life of the word "hoosier" as applied to an
ignorant, rough, unpolished fellow.
Mrs. Samuel M. Deal (formerly Miss Mary L. Davis of Indianapolis) gives
me this statement:
While visiting Columbia, S. C., I was walking one day with a
young gentleman, and we passed a rough looking countryman, "My!
what a hoosier," exclaimed my escort. "That is a very noble
term to apply to such an object," I said. "Why so," he
inquired. "Why I am a Hoosier--all Indiana people are," I
answered. "Oh! we do not use it in that sense here," he
rejoined. "With us a hoosier means a jay."
The following three statements were furnished to me by Mr. Meredith
Nicholson, who collected them some months since:
John Bell Henneman, of the department of English, University of
Tennessee, Knoxville, writes:
The word "hoosier" is generally used in Virginia, South
Carolina, Tennessee as an equivalent for "a country hoodlum,"
"a rough, uncouth countryman," etc. The idea of "country" is
always attached to it in my mind, with a degree of
"uncouthness" added. I simply speak from my general
understanding of the term as heard used in the States mentioned
above.
Mr. Raymond Weeks, of Columbia, Mo., writes:
Pardon my delay in answering your question concerning the word
"hoosier" in this section. The word means a native of Indiana,
and has a rare popular sense of a backwoodsman, a rustic. One
hears: "He is a regular hoosier."
Mrs. John M. Judah, of Memphis, writes:
About the word "Hoosier"--one hears it in Tennessee often. It
always means rough, uncouth, countrified. "I am a Hoosier," I
have said, and my friends answer bewilderingly, "But all
Indiana-born are Hoosiers," I declare, "What nonsense!" is the
answer generally, but one old politician responded with a
little more intelligence on the subject: "You Indianians should
forget that. It has been untrue for many years." In one of Mrs.
Evans's novels--"St. Elmo," I think--a noble philanthropic
young Southern woman is reproached by her haughty father for
teaching the poor children in the neighborhood--"a lot of
hoosiers," he calls them. I have seen it in other books, too,
but I can not recall them. In newspapers the word is common
enough, in the sense I referred to.
It is scarcely possible that this widespread use of the word in this
general sense could have resulted if the word had been coined to signify
a native of Indiana, but it would have been natural enough, if the word
were in common use as slang in the South, to apply it to the people of
Indiana. Many of the early settlers were of a rough and ready character,
and doubtless most of them looked it in their long and toilsome
emigration, but, more than that, it is an historical fact that about the
time of the publication of Finley's poem there was a great fad of
nicknaming in the West, and especially as to the several States. It was
a feature of the humor of the day, and all genial spirits "pushed it
along." A good illustration of this is seen in the following passage
from Hoffman's "Winter in the West"[10] referred to above:
There was a long-haired "hooshier" from Indiana, a couple of
smart-looking "suckers" from the southern part of Illinois, a
keen-eyed, leather-belted "badger" from the mines of
Ouisconsin, and a sturdy, yoemanlike fellow, whose white capot,
Indian moccasins and red sash proclaimed, while he boasted a
three years' residence, the genuine "wolverine," or naturalized
Michiganian. Could one refuse to drink with such a company? The
spokesman was evidently a "red horse" from Kentucky, and
nothing was wanting but a "buckeye" from Ohio to render the
assemblage as complete as it was select.
This same frontier jocularity furnishes an explanation for the origin of
several of the theories of the derivation of the name. If an assuming
sort of person, in a crowd accustomed to the use of "hoosier" in its
general slang sense, should pretentiously announce that he was a
"husher," or a "hussar," nothing would be more characteristically
American than for somebody to observe, "He is a hoosier, sure enough."
And the victim of the little pleasantry would naturally suppose that the
joker had made a mistake in the term. But the significance of the word
must have been quite generally understood, for the testimony is uniform
that it carried its slurring significance from the start. Still it was
not materially more objectionable than the names applied to the people
of other States, and it was commonly accepted in the spirit of humor. As
Mr. Finley put it, in later forms of his poem:
With feelings proud we contemplate
The rising glory of our State;
Nor take offense by application
Of its good-natured appellation.
It appears that the word was not generally known throughout the State
until after the publication of "The Hoosiers' Nest," though it was known
earlier in some localities, and these localities were points of contact
with the Southern people. And this was true as to Mr. Finley's locality,
for the upper part of the Whitewater valley was largely settled by
Southerners, and from the Tennessee-Carolina mountain region, where the
word was especially in use. Such settlements had a certain
individuality. In his "Sketches" (page 38) the Rev. Aaron Wood says:
Previous to 1830 society was not homogeneous, but in scraps,
made so by the electic affinity of race, tastes, sects and
interest. There was a wide difference in the domestic habits of
the families peculiar to the provincial gossip, dialect and
tastes of the older States from which they had emigrated.
The tradition in my own family, which was located in the lower part of
the Whitewater valley, is that the word was not heard there until "along
in the thirties." In that region it always carried the idea of roughness
or uncouthness, and it developed a derivative--"hoosiery"--which was
used as an adjective or adverb to indicate something that was rough,
awkward or shiftless. Testimony as to a similar condition in the middle
part of the Whitewater valley is furnished in the following statement,
given me by the Rev. T. A. Goodwin:
In the summer of 1830 I went with my father, Samuel Goodwin,
from our home at Brookville to Cincinnati. We traveled in an
old-fashioned one-horse Dearborn wagon. I was a boy of twelve
years and it was a great occasion for me. At Cincinnati I had a
fip for a treat, and at that time there was nothing I relished
so much as one of those big pieces of gingerbread that were
served as refreshment on muster days, Fourth of July and other
gala occasions, in connection with cider. I went into a baker's
shop and asked for "a fip's worth of gingerbread." The man
said, "I guess you want hoosier-bait," and when he produced it
I found that he had the right idea. That was the first time I
ever heard the word "hoosier," but in a few years it became
quite commonly applied to Indiana people. The gingerbread
referred to was cooked in square pans--about fifteen inches
across, I should think--and with furrows marked across the top,
dividing it into quarter-sections. A quarter-section sold for a
fip, which was 6-1/4 cents. It is an odd fact that when Hosier
J. Durbin joined the Indiana Methodist Conference, in 1835, his
name was misspelled "Hoosier" in the minutes, and was so
printed. The word "Hoosier" always had the sense of roughness
or uncouthness in its early use.
At the time this statement was made, neither Mr. Goodwin nor I knew of
the existence of the last four lines of Finley's poem, in which this
same term "hoosier-bait" occurs, they being omitted in all the ordinary
forms of the poem. The derivation of this term is obvious, whether
"bait" be taken in its sense of a lure or its sense of food. It was
simply something that "hoosiers" were fond of, and its application was
natural at a time when the ideal of happiness was "a country-boy with a
hunk of gingerbread."
After the word had been applied to Indiana, and had entered on its
double-sense stage, writers who were familiar with both uses
distinguished between them by making it a proper noun when Indiana was
referred to. An illustration of this is seen in the writings of J. S.
Robb, author of "The Swamp Doctor in the Southwest" and other humorous
sketches, published in 1843. He refers to Indiana as "the Hoosier
state," but in a sketch of an eccentric St. Louis character he writes
thus:
One day, opposite the Planter's House, during a military
parade, George was engaged in selling his edition of the
Advocate of Truth, when a tall hoosier, who had been gazing at
him with astonishment for some time, roared out in an
immoderate fit of laughter.
"What do you see so funny in me to laugh at?" inquired George.
"Why, boss," said the hoosier, "I wur jest a thinkin' ef I'd
seed you out in the woods, with all that har on, they would a
been the d--dest runnin' done by this 'coon ever seen in them
diggins--you're ekill to the elephant! and a leetle the haryest
small man I've seen scart up lately."
Unfortunately, however, not many writers were familiar with the double
use of the word, and the distinction has gradually died out, while
persistent assertions that the word was coined to designate Indiana
people have loaded on them all the odium for the significance that the
word has anywhere.
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. There seems never to have
been any attempt at a rational philological derivation, unless we may so
account Mr. Charles G. Leland's remarks in Barriere and Leland's
"Dictonary of Slang, Jargon and Cant," which are as follows:
Hoosier (American). A nickname given to natives of Indiana.
Bartlett cites from the Providence journal a story which has
the appearance of being an after-manufacture to suit the name,
deriving hoosier from "husher--from their primary capacity to
still their opponents." He also asserts that the Kentuckians
maintained that the nickname expresses the exclamation of an
Indianian when he knocks at a door and exclaims "Who's yere?"
However, the word originally was not hoosier at all, but
hoosieroon, or hoosheroon, hoosier being an abbreviation of
this. I can remember that in 1834, having read of hoosiers, and
spoken of them a boy from the West corrected me, and said that
the word was properly hoosieroon. This would indicate a Spanish
origin.
The source of Mr. Leland's error is plain. "Hoosieroon" was undoubtedly
coined by Mr. Finley to designate a Hoosier child, and what the boy
probably told Mr. Leland was that the name to apply properly to him
would be Hoosieroon. But that alone would not dispose wholly of the
Spanish suggestion, for "oon" or "on" is not only a Spanish ending, but
is a Spanish diminutive indicating blood relation. In reality, however,
Mr. Finley did not understand Spanish, and the ending was probably
suggested to him by quadroon and octoron, which, of course, were in
general use. There is no Spanish word that would give any suggestion of
"hoosier." The only other language of continental Europe that could be
looked to for its origin would be French, but there is no French word
approaching it except, perhaps, "huche," which means a kneading trough,
and there is no probability of derivation from that.
In fact, "hoosier" carries Anglo-Saxon credentials. It is Anglo-Saxon in
form and Anglo-Saxon in ring. If it came from any foreign language, it
has been thoroughly anglicized. And in considering its derivation it is
to be remembered that the Southerners have always had a remarkable
faculty for creating new words and modifying old ones. Anyone who has
noted the advent of "snollygoster" in the present generation, or has
read Longstreet's elucidation of "fescue," "abisselfa," and
"anpersant"[11] will readily concede that. And in this connection it is
to be observed that the word "yahoo" has long been in use in Southern
slang, in almost exactly the same sense as "hoosier," and the latter
word may possibly have developed from its last syllable. We have a very
common slang word in the North--"yap"--with the same signification,
which may have come from the same source, though more probably from the
provincial English "yap," to yelp or bark. "Yahoo" is commonly said to
have been coined by Swift, but there is a possibility that it was in
slang use in his day.
It is very probable that the chief cause of the absence of conjectures
of the derivation of "Hoosier" from an English stem was the lack in our
dictionaries of any word from which it could be supposed to come, and it
is a singular fact that in our latest dictionaries--the Standard and the
Century--there appears the word "hoose," which has been in use for
centuries in England. It is used now to denote a disease common to
calves, similar to the gapes in chickens, caused by the lodgement of
worms in the throat. The symptons of this disease include staring eyes,
rough coat with hair turned backward, and hoarse wheezing. So forlorn an
aspect might readily suggest giving the name "hooser" or "hoosier" to an
uncouth, rough-looking person. In this country, for some reason, this
disease has been known only by the name of the worm that causes
it--"strongylus micrurus"--it sounds very much like "strangle us marcus"
as the veterinarians pronounce it--but in England "hoose" is the common
name. This word is from a very strong old stem. Halliwell, in his
"Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words," gives "hooze" and "hoors,"
and states that "hoos" occurs in the "Promptorium Parvulorum," and
"hoozy" in the "Cornwall Glossary," the latter being used also in
Devonshire. Palmer, in his "Folk-Etymology," says that "hoarst--a
Lincolnshire word for a cold on the chest, as if that which makes one
hoarse," is a corruption of the Old English "host," a cough, Danish
"hoste," Dutch "hoeste," Anglo-Saxon "hweost," a wheeziness; and refers
to Old English "hoose," to cough, and Cleveland "hooze," to wheeze.
Descriptions of the effect of hoose on the appearance of animals will be
found in Armatage's "Cattle Doctor," and in the "Transactions of the
Highland Society of Scotland," fourth series, Vol. 10, at page 206.
There is also a possibility of a geographical origin for the word, for
there is a coast parish of Cheshire, England, about seven miles west of
Liverpool, named Hoose. The name probably refers to the cliffs in the
vicinity, for "hoo," which occurs both in composition and independently
in old English names of places, is a Saxon word signifying high.
However, this is an obscure parish, and no especial peculiarity of the
people is known that would probably give rise to a distinctive name for
them.
There is one other possibility that is worthy of mention--that the word
may come to us through England from the Hindoo. In India there is in
general use a word commonly written "huzur," which is a respectful form
of address to persons of rank or superiority. In "The Potter's Thumb"
Mrs. Steel writes it "hoozur." Akin to it is "housha," the title of a
village authority in Bengal. It may seem impossible that "hoosier" could
come from so far off a source, and get it is almost certain that our
slang word "fakir," and its derivative verb "fake," came from the Hindoo
through England, whither for many years people of all classes have been
returning from Indian service. It is even more certain that the word
"khaki" was introduced from India, and passed into general use in
English and American nurseries long before khaki-cloth was known to us.
As a matter of fact, words pass from one language to another in slang
very readily. For example, throughout England and America a kidnapper is
said in thieves' slang to be "on the kinchin lay," and it can scarcely
be questioned that this word is direct from the German "kindchen." The
change in meaning from "huzur" to "hoosier" would be explicable by the
outlandish dress and looks of the Indian grandees from a native English
standpoint, and one might naturally say of an uncouth person, "He looks
like a huzur."
It is not my purpose to urge that any one of these suggested
possibilities of derivation is preferable to the other, or to assert
that there may not be other and more rational ones. It is sufficient to
have pointed out that there are abundant sources from which the word may
have been derived. The essential point is that Indiana and her people
had nothing whatever to do with its origin or its signification. It was
applied to us in raillery, and our only connection with it is that we
have meekly borne it for some three score years and ten, and have made
it widely recognized as a badge of honor, rather than a term or
reproach.
* * * * *
_Addendum_, February, 1907. The greater part of the preceding was
published in the Indianapolis News of Aug. 23 and 30, 1902. Afterwards I
rewrote and enlarged it. Since then there have appeared two publications
which threw some additional light on the subject. One of these is an
account of Col. Lehmanowsky, purporting to be autobiographical,
published under the title, "Under Two Captains," by Rev. W. A. Sadtler,
Ph. D., of Philadelphia. This demonstrates that Lehmanowsky believed he
originated the word, for he gives the following account of it:
In this connection I may mention an amusing incident that
occured somewhat later in a town in Kentucky, where I happened
for a day or two. There was a drunken brawl in progress on the
street, and as quite a number were involved in it, the people
with whom I was speaking began to be alarmed. I remarked just
then that a few hussars would soon quiet them. My remark was
caught up by some bystander, and the word hussar construed to
mean the men of the State of Indiana (from which I had just
come), and thus the word "Hoosier" came into existence. Such is
the irony of fate! Learned men have labored long to introduce
some favored word of the most approved classic derivation, and
as a rule have failed. Here a chance word of mine, miscalled by
an ignorant loafer, catches the popular fancy and passes into
Literature.[12]
At the same time he furnishes conclusive evidence that he did not
originate it, for he says that he did not leave Washington for the West
until the spring of 1833; that he went as far as Ohio with his family
and passed the winter of 1833-4 in the state,[13] reaching Indiana the
next spring, or more than a year after "The Hoosier's Nest" had appeared
in print. His story, as given above, locates the incident at a still
later date.
The other publication is the third volume of The English Dialect
Dictionary, in which appears the following:
"HOOZER, Cum. 4 (hu-zer) said of anything unusually large."
The "Cum 4" is a reference to "A Glossary of the Words and Phrases
pertaining to the Dialect of Cumberland;" edition of 1899.
Although I had long been convinced that "hoosier," or some word closely
resembling it, must be an old English dialect or slang word, I had never
found any trace of a similar substantive with this ending until in this
publication, and, in my opinion, this word "hoozer" is the original form
of our "hoosier." It evidently harks back to the Anglo-Saxon "hoo" for
its derivation. It might naturally signify a hill-dweller or highlander
as well as something large, but either would easily give rise to the
derivative idea of uncouthness and rusticity.
There is a suggestiveness in the fact that it is Cumberland dialect. The
very center of hoosierdom in the South is the Cumberland Plateau with
its associated Cumberland Mountains, Cumberland River, Cumberland Gap,
and Cumberland Presbyterianism. The name Cumberland in these, however,
is honorary in origin, the river and mountains having been named for
that Duke of Cumberland who is known to the Scotch as "The Butcher of
Culloden." But many of the settlers of this region, or their immediate
forebears, were from Cumberland county, England, and so "hoozer" was a
natural importation to the region. Thence it was probably brought to us
by their migratory descendants, many of whom settled in the upper
Whitewater Valley--the home of John Finley.