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Hoosier
Monday, January 20th, 2003Dave Barry’s taking heat for denigrating the word “Hoosier.”
Barry’s bullet-point list of possible origins of the word is right on. Current thinking seems to be migrating toward the “Rev. Harry Hoosier” theory. Rev. Hoosier was a black evengelical who roamed the southern Indiana countryside looking for converts.
Funny, I was just talking to a friend the other night about where the word comes from. The truth is, no one really knows. Doctoral theses have been written on the subject, and each time an Indiana University sports team makes a splash on the national stage, requests pour in to the alumni association asking for a definition.
While I was living in St. Louis, I found that “Hoosier” has an entirely different connotation there. It’s just about the worst damn thing you can call someone — it’s pretty much the equivalent of the n-word for white people.
What follows is a lengthy piece I wrote while living in St. Louis, hoping to sell it to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The paper passed, mainly because it’s so long. But since it’s already written, I’m thinking Barry’s column this week presents a nice opportunity for me to share it with you.
Redeeming ‘Hoosier’I spent a good deal of last year in St. Louis. On the whole, I found the city charming. I dug the gritty blues bars on Broadway. I was romanced by the history and tradition of the Cardinals (Iâm now a fan for life). I let my dog loose on the grassy meadows of Forest Park. In short, St. Louis is a fine town and St. Louisans are right to take pride in it.
But one nasty habit of St. Louisans gnawed at me in my time there and still does. Itâs the way St. Louisans sully the word âHoosier.â As a native Indianan and a graduate of Indiana University I find the disparaging, often hostile invective with which St. Louisans use âHoosierâ troubling.
Allow me to give all of St. Louis a primer on âHoosierâ and its roots.
The truth is, Indianans donât exactly know where the word came from. But we have lots of fun guessing. Itâs been the subject of talk shows, thesis papers and the source of many a query to the Indiana University PR department when our basketball team makes national news. An article on the word in the Indiana University alumni associationâs magazine has become the most requested article in the magazineâs history.
The word has been around since at least the 19th century, probably earlier.
The most colorful but least likely explanation of its origin comes from James Whitcomb Riley, the 19th century âHoosier poet,â who wrote âLittle Orphan Annieâ and âThe Olâ Swimminâ Hole.â Riley wrote, â…early (Indiana) settlers were very vicious fighters, and not only gouged and scratched, but frequently bit off noses and ears. This was so ordinary an affair that a settler coming into a barroom on a morning after a fight and seeing an ear on the floor would merely push it aside with his foot and carelessly ask, âWhose ear?ââ
The Indiana Historical Society offers other explanations, most similarly steeped in folklore. One says that Hoosier pioneers, when calling on one another at dinnertime, would sit at the table and call out âwhoâs ere?â at a knock on the door. Another story stems from the proficiency southern Indiana rivermen possessed in quieting barroom ruffians who ridiculed them for their lack of sophistication. Because they quickly quieted detractors with their fists, they were called âhushers,â which some suggest eventually bled into âHoosiers.â
Jacob Piatt Dunn, Jr., the Indiana Historical Societyâs longtime historian, traces the word to Englandâs Columbian dialect. There, âHoozerâ meant anything large, but its geographic connotation referred specifically to hills. Likely, the word came to apply to the rolling hills of southern Indiana and the western foothills of Appalachia where émigrés from that part of England tended to settle.
The most recent theory comes from the June 1995 issue of the Indiana Magazine of History, and cites the Reverend Harry Hoosier, a nomadic âNegro Methodistâ evangelist who roamed the stateâs countryside early in the 19th century. Such roving preachers were common at the time, and because the Rev. Hoosier was the most prominent of them, his name may have become a generic term for all of his ilk, and eventually a catch-all for settlers just north of the Ohio River.
Professor James Madison, chairman of the Indiana University department of history likes the last theory best. âI like the possibility that a state which was at one time among the most fertile places for the Ku Klux Klan derives its venerable nickname from a black preacher,â Madison says.
âHoosierâ likely gained momentum as regional pride flourished throughout the Civil War and state battalions often razzed one another with nicknames, most of them disparaging. âHoosiersâ quickly stuck to soldiers from Indiana, but others were just as colorful. Texans, for instance, were âBeetheads,â Alabamans were âLizards, Nebraskans were âBug-eaters,â and South Carolinians were âWeasels.â Missourians, you may be curious to know, were called âPukes,â a name that makes âHoosiersâ downright flattering.
Indianans and North Carolinians (Tarheels) were among the few states to embrace the pejorative nicknames given them by neighbors, and make them endearing.
Today, we Indianans relish the word. To some it symbolizes little more than baskeball — packed field houses, tiny Milan high schoolâs march to the state basketball championship, and the underdog-aura of the Gene Hackman/Dennis Hopper/Barbara Hershey âHoosiers,â movie. To others, it evokes small towns, limestone courthouses and the slow, lazy pace of small town living. It is wasting afternoons on the front porch, neighborhood pitch-ins and, to borrow from native Hoosier John Mellencamp, âsuckinâ on a chili dog outside the Tastee Freeze.â
When Indiana University played Syracuse for the 1987 NCAA basketball championship, âHoosierâ even entered the Congressional Record. Sen. Alfonse DâAmato of New York, in supporting the Orangemen, disparaged both âHoosierâ and the state of Indiana by reading an unfortunate Websterâs definition on the floor of the US Senate. The dictionary defined âHoosiersâ as both ânative Indianansâ and, alternately, âignorant rustics.â
Indianaâs own Senator Dan Quayle responded in kind, offering his own more flattering definition of Hoosier as âsmart, resourceful, skillful, a winner, and brilliant.â Websterâs declined Senator Quayleâs alternate definition, but we Hoosiers take comfort in the fact the cream nâ crimson settled the dispute in our favor on the basketball floor.
I wonât comment on what affect Senator Quayleâs later political career had on the esteem of âHoosier.â
But the question persists: why do St. Louisans hold such peculiar animosity toward the word?
According to St. Louis Universityâs Father William Barnaby Faherty, author of numerous books on Missouri history, it may stem from the fact that St. Louisans have always held their noses up at their more agrarian neighbors.
From the time Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau stepped off their river raft in 1764, establishing St. Louis as a fur trading post, the city as had an aversion to agriculture and the farming life. Because St. Louis quickly took interest in mercantile, the city never established itself as an agricultural post as Chicago, Denver and Minneapolis did. Consequently, St. Louis area farms were smaller and their proprietors poorer than their counterparts in other parts of the Midwest. A farmer venturing into St. Louis to sell his product was traditionally frowned upon, shunned as âuncouthâ and generally outcast as a âmere laborer.â
Similarly, Father Faherty suggests that the word âPikersâ might be âHoosierâsâ historical antecedent â at least in St. Louis. âPikersâ was a depreciatory term St. Louisans had for migrants who followed low-paying jobs up and down the National Pike, which at the time ended in St. Louis. The term eventually referred to backward folks in general, not just those without a permanent homestead.
According to Father Faherty, the athletic teams from the venerable Washington University were once called the âPikers,â until prestige compelled the school to switch to the less interesting but less denigrating âBears.â
Such history jives well with St. Louisansâ current use of âHoosier,â which I understand to mean âcountrified people who hang out at the mall and cause city-livers great eyesore.â Or, as one Post Dispatch reporter wrote in a 1993 article, âthe demeaning phrase of choice among white St. Louisans for whites with rural roots.â
With the exception of the few of us who have happened to live in both places, most Indianans are blissfully ignorant of the nastiness with which St. Louisans have come to besmirch our cherished moniker. We Indianans — we âHoosiers,â — wear our label like a frilly blue ribbon.
As Professor Madison points out, âThe popularity of the moniker is due to the fact that Hoosiers really believe they are different, a distinctive culture and place, and that they are proud of that culture and place. I like that — that we have not yet reached the point where everyone and every place is the same, all vanilla under golden arches. That there is difference in this country.â
In the age of the Gap, Starbucks and Borders dotting every suburb with uniformity, Iâd say Professor Madison is on to something. A little regional pride is a healthy thing.
Given the rich history of the Mississippi River, of the Louisiana Purchase, of Bob Costas and toasted ravioli, St. Louisans too have much to be proud of, even without the great nickname we Indianans have.
We just ask that you St. Louisans come up with a new term of denigration for the more pastoral, less sophisticated people around you.
In Indiana we call them âKentuckians.â
how is it that we know the tooth brush was invented in kentucky? if it were invented anywhere else, it would have been called the teeth brush.
I’m a native St. Louisan and grew up knowing Hoosier only by its St. Louis definition. I remember when the movie Hoosiers came out, we made so much fun of the title, and none of our friends saw it.
And when I was in college in Indiana, hearing commercials with politicians hyping their “hoosier values” and seeing signs for the “Hoosier Lotto” cracked me up.
It wasn’t until college that I learned that people in St. Louis were the only ones that thought hoosier was a derogatory term.
I always wondered where that came from. Now I can say I know. Maybe.
Incidentally, hoosier is a very handy term, and I have found that there is no comparable word that I can use now that I am living away from St. Louis.
In Indiana, 4th grade presents elementary students with Indiana History, and I remember my teacher that year confidently informing the class of her definition of Hoosier (allegedly supported by historical fact).
Her definition derived from the theory that 19th century Hoosiers would take flatboats down the Wabash and Ohio, then the Mississippi, on in to New Orleans to push their grain and other agricultural goods. On the Mississippi, the pre-dawn and dawn hours were often blindingly foggy, and flatboat pilots would decipher one another’s location by shouting “Who’s aire..?”
The flatboaters from other states and regions supposedly quickly came to call Indiana natives “Hoosier” in jesting reference to their distinctive river calls.
I always thought it made historical, sense, even if specific tangible evidence hadn’t been shown to support the theory. Anyway, that’s how I heard it.
Nice article, jerk.
Did you know that Indiana is home to the worlds largest KKK chapter? Are you aware that Indiana is primarily an agricultural state, whereas Kentucky’s economy is split between industry(coal) and agriculture(tobacco)? Are you aware of the irony in writing an article that complains about the way the rest of the country sees your backward state, then disparaging your neighbors in the same article? You, sir, have proven yourself to be a Hoosier in the truest sense of the word, the St. Louis sense. Really, what other group of people is slow enough to take an insult and turn it into a symbol of state pride? I guess by your logic (and opinion of kentuckians) we should take to calling ourselves the Kentucky Rednecks, have the Redneck Lotto, build the RedneckDome, host a car race called the Redneck500, etc? Give me a break.
I’m sorry, but I just love the word “Hoosier” as used in the St. Louis sense. Now that I live far away, I am immensely entertained by the fact that people outside St. Louis have no idea what the word “hoosier” means for me. My family used the word hoosier so often they actually amended the word grammatically! I have many a fond memory of my mother screaming off the back porch (admittedly a hoosier herself) at the kids (all part of one big hoosier family): “You little hoosiers get back in here & get your shoes on!” Or my father (the King of Hoosiers) would scream at our delapidated house during rennovation “who the hell hoosierfied this damn thing?”
I can’t help it. I find it totally hysterical & try to spread the word and concept wherever I go! Sometimes there just isn’t another word to replace it!
As a native St. Louisan, I must say that the word “Hoosier” is entrenched in our vernacular from (almost) the moment we can speak. When I was very young, and would try to dress myself in mismatched clothing, my mother would tell me that I wasn’t going out dressed like the “town hoosier.” This expression came from her mother, and so on up the line.
Hoosier is such a fantastic word — so encompassing, so direct. There really isn’t another word like it. Ask any St. Louisan — being asked to not use the word “hoosier” would be like giving up our Cardinals. It just ain’t gonna happen.
I grew up in St. Louis and have been around the world and I have found that no one outside of St. Louis has a clue of what a Hoosier is. I tell my kids, like my Mom told me, that if their clothes don’t match that they’ll look like a Hoosier. Funny story: my Father-in-law, who grew up in Chicago, when he met my Dad, who grew up in St. Louis.. My father-in-law said “aren’t hoosier’s from Missouri”, my Dad about came out of his chair. I’ll never know if my father-in-law knew he had insulted my Dad, but I intervened and said “Indiana is the Hooiser state, not Missouri”.
see below
I found this article to be very entertaining. Hoosier is to a St. Louisian, as the city dump is to art. And this must mean I’m a hoosier too. Rock on - South side! (circa 1987)
We love white castles, Cardinals and beer. Not neccessarily in that order. Oh, and don’t tell me you never went dumpster diving.
WTF? Born and raised in Indiana, and I have never heard about this little twist on the nickname.
;)~
Hoosier.
Everything about Hoosier — the why it became a disparaging word in the 18th century, how it becomes connected to Indiana — et all — has already been published in April of 1999 in an IU Linguistics Journal called “The Nickname Hoosier and Its Ethnohistoric Backgroundâ Eurasian Studies Yearbook 1999 Vol 71, pg 224: Bloomington, Ind., Eurolingua, April 1999.
Missouri, being settled / pioneered around the same time as Indiana by the same type of folks (migrating NC germans) know the original use of Hoosier from their former home of NORTH Carolina.
North Carolina was the original “HOOSIER” state — at least that is where it started. AAAH but how many languages can most Hoosiers speak??
Hoosier originally meant ill-mannered rustics, awkward and to botch a job. But how long can Indiana intellectuals (not to mention friends of Indiana) possibly expect to BOTCH the job of defining your moniker???
I think Missouri (and Dave Berry) treats Indiana with all the respect they truthfully deserve after a 171 year debacle of trying to find out the nature of YOUR MONIKER. Not to mention all the flat out lying done by Jacob P. Dunn. HOOSIER HAS NEVER EXISTED AS an Oxford English word — Call any Oxford English lexicographer (call the Cumberland of England TOO).
But now if you go look in Random House’s Early American Slang (pre-Websters by about 100 years) BINGO!
Hoosier is an American WORD — PERIOD and regretably a disparaging one at least early on in 18th Century America.
Try the URL above and get this off your list of things to do.
As Capt Kirk once said to Khan in a Star Trek movie “We are laughing at your superior intellect (Indiana).”
Don’t “Hoosier” this moniker anymore. It makes the rest of us in the heartland of America wonder if a “Hoosier Historian” is actually an oxymoron???
If you forget the URL, go to Google and type in “Hoosier Theory” using quotes. The URL above is the first site listed and first in Hoosier truth.
However I must admit this assumes modern Hoosiers can use a computer.
Really Agitate People — Tell them the TRUTH!! The Truth Detector
Two final points — when you contact your British lexicographer don’t forget to check out THE JACOB P DUNN FABRICATED WORD “HOOZER” too. You will find that to be blarney as well.
Regarding Harry Hosier (btw Harry never spelled his last name as “HOOSIER” only Prof William Pierson attempted that ploy in an Indiana History Mag/Rag). Harry always called himself a Hosier — but after dodging 171 years of facts why should Indiana bother now??
Anyway “Black Harry” as he was called, never preached anywhere as far west as Morgantown, WV (& never in Indiana), he died in 1807 of alcohol related illnesses as other states were being formed like Ohio. He also was very reluctant to preach in the south because of slavery and yet most inhabitants of Indiana are chronicled to have come from the south & North Carolina in OVERWHELMING NUMBERS!! (check out the Greg Rose Indiana Migration study). So yea Harry has no connection to Indiana, not around in the timeframe of statehood, and DID NOT INFLUENCE the people who would move to Indiana but “Jamie” Madison claims “Harry did it” (HE’S A REAL “HOOSIER HISTORIAN” — USE THE ORIGINAL MEANING PLEASE)
Has James Madison done any REAL research or is he just spewing more parlor game bilge? Remember James Madison is the leading proponent of “WE WILL NEVER KNOW THE REAL HOOSIER ANSWER”. If he is Indiana’s best expert — it will be another 1000 years before Hoosiers get a clue.
I am laughing so hard I need a hanky to remove the tears from my eyes.
Go Dave Berry and Go Missouri — YOU GOT “HOOSIER” RIGHT.
I doubt very much that St. Louis holds James Whitcomb Riley in High regard. You should. As well as authors Like Booth Tarkington hat followed him. Riley though best known as a childrenâs poet he also proved a point early in his career that paved the way for entire generations of Midwestern authors. He faked an Edgar Allen Poe Poem and sent it to an eastern newspaper. It was published and believed to be one of his best. But when they revealed the hoax people still believed that it was an original Poe poem because it was considered too good to have been written by a western author. Some new York newspapers went as far as saying âFaking a poem is one thing but to create and entire fictions city of Kokomo Indiana now that is ridiculous.â
This exposed eastern bias towards western writers and changed the worldâs perception of them. He and many other Hoosier authors showed the world that our plains, prairies, and people were all our won. We were a new nation with splendors all our own.
Tarkington helped authors in another way. He helped expose the over the transom attitude of editors in the east for publishing. This is an attitude that is now very much still alive but he helped to show that it was foolish. His first book the Gentleman from Indiana was an amazing success. When first proposed to the editor of the newspaper it was serialized in it wasnât even read. When Mr. Tarkingtonâs sister finally convinced him to read it and publish it the newspaperâs circulation increased by five times.
These hardly seem the actions of unintelligent or unskilled people. Yet they were Hoosier to the core. They wrote constantly of Hoosier life and their writing was some of the most beloved of their time. I could name other important Hoosier figures but it would take too much time. There is a significant impact that we have brought about for the good of this country and region but one of the values that Hoosiers seem to hold and that many otherâs donât is humility.
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