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.