Sulgrove related the incident of an Irishman, employed in excavating the canal around the falls at Louisville, who declared after a fight in which he had vanquished several fellow-laborers that he was “a husher,” and this was offered as a possible origin of the word. The same writer suggested another explanation, that a certain Colonel Lehmanowski, a Polish officer who lectured through the West on Napoleon’s wars, pronounced Hussar in a way that captivated some roystering fellow, who applied the word to himself in self-glorification, pronouncing it “Hoosier.” Lehmanowski’s identity has been established as a sojourner in Indiana, and his son was a member of an Indiana regiment in the Civil War. The Rev. Aaron Woods[10] is another contributor to the literature of the subject, giving the Lehmanowski story with a few variations. When the young men of the Indiana side of the Ohio crossed over to Louisville, the Kentuckians made sport of them, calling them “New Purchase greenies,” and declaring that they of the southern side of the river were a superior race, composed of “half-alligator, half-horse, and tipped off with snapping turtle!” Fighting grew out of these boasts in the market-place and streets of Louisville. An Indiana visitor who had heard Lehmanowski lecture on “The Wars of Europe” and been captivated by the prowess of the Hussars, whipped one of the Kentuckians, and bending over him cried, “I’m a Hoosier,” meaning, “I’m a Hussar.” Mr. Woods adds that he was living in the State at the time and that this was the true origin of the term. This is, however, hardly conclusive. The whole Lehmanowski story seems to be based on communication between Indiana and Kentucky workmen during the building of the Ohio Falls Canal. The original canal was completed in 1830; and as the Polish soldier was not in this region earlier than 1840, ten years after the appearance of Finley’s poem, it is clear that those who would reach the truth of the matter must go back of “The Hoosier Nest” to find secure ground. No one has ever pretended that Finley originated the word, and it is not at all likely that he did so; but his poem gave it wide currency, and doubtless had much to do with fixing it on the Indianians. Bartlett, in his “Dictionary of Americanisms,” gives the novel solution of the problem that the men of superior strength throughout the early West, the heroes of log-rollings and house-raisings, were called “hushers” because of their ability to hush or quiet their antagonists; and that “husher” was a common term for a bully. The Ohio River boatmen carried the word to New Orleans, where a foreigner among them, in attempting to apply the word to himself, pronounced it “Hoosier.” Sulgrove may have had this meaning in mind in citing his Irishman, though he is not explicit. Hoosier as a Christian name has been known in the Ohio Valley; it was borne by a member of the Indiana Methodist Conference in 1835. A Louisville baker named Hoosier made a variety of sweet bread which was so much affected by Indiana people that they were called “Hoosier’s customers,” “Hoosier’s men,” and so on; but no date can be found for this. The Rev. T. A. Goodwin, first heard the word at Cincinnati in 1830, where it described a species of gingerbread, but without reference to Indiana.
It is clear that the cultivated people of Indiana recognized the nickname in the early half of the century. Wright and Smith, as mentioned above, had sought to determine its genesis; and Tilghman A. Howard, when a congressman from Indiana, writing home to a friend in 1840, spoke casually of the “Hoosier State.”[11] The word occurs familiarly in Hall’s “New Purchase” (1855), and it is found also in Beste’s rare volume, “The Wabash; or, Adventures of an English Gentleman’s Family in the Interior of America,” published at London in the same year, and in Mrs. Beecher’s “From Dawn to Daylight” (1859). And when, in 1867, Sandford C. Cox published a book of verses containing the couplet,—
“If Sam is right, I would suggest
A native Hoosier as the best,”—
the word was widely known, and thereafter it frequently occurs in all printed records touching the State. It is reported from Tennessee, Virginia, and South Carolina by independent observers, who say that the idea of a rough countryman is always associated with it. In Missouri it is sometimes used thus abstractly, but a native Indianian is usually meant, without reference to his manners or literacy.
No reader of Hoosier chronicles can fail to be impressed by the relation of the great forests to the people who came to possess and tame them. Before they reached the Indiana wilderness in their advance before civilization, the stalwart pioneers had swung their axes in Pennsylvania or Kentucky, and had felt the influence of the great, gloomy woodlands in their lives; but in Indiana this influence was greatly intensified. They experienced an isolation that is not possible to-day in any part of the country, and the loss of nearly every civilizing agency that men value. These frontiersmen could hardly have believed themselves the founders of a permanent society, for the exact topography of much of their inheritance was unknown to them; large areas were submerged for long periods, and the density of the woods increased the difficulty of building roads and knitting the scattered clearings and villages into a compact and sensitive commonwealth. Once cleared, the land yielded a precarious living to the pioneers in return for their labors and sacrifices; after the first dangers from beasts of prey, the pestiferous small animals anticipated the harvest and ate the corn. One ear in four acres remained after the gray squirrels had taken their pleasure in a Johnson County field.[12] Sheep were out of the question on account of the wolves; and always present and continuing were the fevers that preyed on the worn husbandmen and sent many to premature graves. The women, deprived of every comfort, contributed their share of the labor, making homes of their cabins; dyeing the wool, when they had it, with the ooze of the walnut, carding, spinning, and weaving it, and finally cutting the cloth into garments; or if linen were made, following the flax from the field through all the processes of manufacture until it clothed the family.
The pioneers could not see then, as their children see now, that the wilderness was a factor in their destiny; that it drove them in upon themselves, strengthening their independence in material things by shutting them off from older communities, and that it even fastened upon their tongues the peculiarities of speech which they had brought with them into the wilderness. But their isolation compelled meditation, and when reading matter penetrated the woodlands it was usually worth the trouble of transportation in a day of few roads and little travel. The pioneers knew their Bibles and named their children for the Bible heroes, and most of their other books were religious. There have been worse places in which to form habits of thought, and to lay the foundation for a good manner of writing our language, than the Hoosier cabin. Lying before the fireplace in his father’s humble Spencer County home during the fourteen years that the family spent in Indiana,—years that were of the utmost importance in his life,—Abraham Lincoln studied his few books and caught the elusive language-spirit that later on gave character and beauty to his utterances.
The social life of the first comers also drew its inspiration from their environment, and was expressed in log-rolling, house-raising, and other labors that could best be done by coöperation, and which they concluded usually, in a fashion quite characteristic, with a frolic. After the axe, the rifle was most important among their belongings; for they trusted largely to the fortunes of the hunt for food; and peltries became a valuable medium of exchange in their simple economy. Expertness in the use of the rifle and friendly rivalry in marksmanship among the settlers led to other social gatherings; and even professional men took pride in the sport and participated in these contests. The militia system in the early days was not an important feature of Hoosier life. The Hoosier’s sense of humor has always been keen, and where, as once occurred on muster day in the White Water country, a part of the officer’s duty was to separate wearers of shoes from those who appeared in moccasins, and bearers of cornstalks from those who carried rifles, there was nothing of the pomp and pageantry of war to captivate the imagination of the people.
The Hoosier fiddle was a factor in all the festivities of the country folk. The fiddler was frequently an eccentric genius, ranking with the rural poet, who was often merely a maker of idle rhymes; however, the country fiddler in Indiana has held his own against latter-day criticism and the competition of the village brass band. Governor Whitcomb enjoyed local fame as a violinist, and Berry Sulgrove and General Lew Wallace, in their younger years, were skilful with the bow. Dr. H. W. Taylor, a conscientious student of early Hoosier customs, connects the Hoosier fiddler with the Scotch Highlanders, and has expressed his belief[13] that the Highlander folk coming to the United States naturally sought the mountain country of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, and that the Scotch fiddle and its traditions survive principally in these mountainous countries. We are told that the fiddle of the Hoosiers is an exotic and cannot long survive, though fifteen years after this prediction a contest of Hoosier fiddlers was held in the largest hall at Indianapolis, and many musicians of this old school appeared from the back districts to compete for the prizes. The great aim of the old time fiddlers was to make their instruments “talk.” Their tunes enjoyed such euphonious names as “Old Dan Tucker,” “Old Zip Coon,” “Possum up a Gum Stump,” “Irish Washerwoman,” “Waggoner,” “Ground Spy,” and “Jay Bird.” Dr. Taylor discovered that the very Hoosier manner of bowing, i.e. fiddling, was derived from the Scotch, and he gives this description of it: “The arm, long, bony, and sinewy, was stretched forwards, downwards, and outwards from the shoulder, and at full length. There was absolutely no movement of the wrist, a very little at the elbow, and just a degree more at the shoulder.” Hall ironically observed that the country fiddler could, like Paganini, play one tune or parts of nearly two dozen tunes on one string; and like the great maestro he played without notes, and with endless flourishes. He gives this attractive portrait of one of the New Purchase fiddlers:—
“He held his fiddle against his breast—perhaps out of affection—and his bow in the middle, and like a cart-whip; things enabling him, however, the more effectually to flog his instrument when rebellious: and the afflicted creature would scream right out in agony! Indeed, his Scremonah bore marks of premature old age—its fingerboard being indented with little pits, and its stomach was frightfully incrusted with rosin and other gummy things, till it looked as dark and careworn as Methuselah! Dan was, truly, no niggard of ‘rosum,’ for he ‘greased’ as he termed it, between his tunes every time! and then, at his first few vigorous jerks, fell a shower of dust on the agitated bosom of his instrument, calling out in vain for mercy under the cruel punishment.”[14]