A few instances of the earlier written use of Hoosier have been found. The word appears in the “Carrier’s Address” of the Indiana Democrat on January 3, 1832. G. L. Murdock wrote on February 11, 1831, in a letter to General John Tipton, “Our Boat will [be] named the Indiana Hoosier.” In a publication printed in 1860, Recollections . . . of the Wabash Valley, Sandford Cox quotes a diary which he dates July 14, 1827, “There is a Yankee trick for you — done up by a Hoosier.”
Several popular theories for the nickname exist, including:
When a visitor hailed a pioneer cabin in Indiana or knocked upon its door, the settler would respond, “Who’s yere?” And from this frequent response Indiana became the “Who’s yere” or Hoosier state.
Indiana river-men were so spectacularly successful in trouncing or “hushing” their adversaries in the brawling that was then common that they became known as “hushers,” and eventually Hoosiers.
There was once a contractor named Hoosier employed on the Louisville and Portland Canal who preferred to hire laborers from Indiana. They were called “Hoosier’s men” and eventually all Indianans were called Hoosiers.
It is also claimed that Indiana’s earliest settlers were enthusiastic and vicious fighters who gouged, scratched and bit off noses and ears. This was so common an occurrence that a settler coming into a tavern the morning after a fight and seeing an ear on the floor would touch it with his toe and casually ask, “Whose ear?”
The most serious student of the matter was Jacob Piatt Dunn, Jr., Indiana historian and longtime secretary of the Indiana Historical Society. Dunn noted that “hoosier” was frequently used in many parts of the South in the 19th century for woodsmen or rough hill people. He traced the word back to “hoozer,” in the Cumberland dialect of England. This derives from the Anglo-Saxon word “hoo” meaning high or hill. In the Cumberland dialect, the word “hoozer” meant anything unusually large, presumably like a hill. It is not hard to see how this word was attached to a hill dweller or highlander. Immigrants from Cumberland, England, settled in the mountains of the southern United States. Their descendants brought the name with them when they settled in the hills of southern Indiana.
As Meredith Nicholson observed: “The origin of the term ‘Hoosier’ is not known with certainty.” But certain it is that . . . Hoosiers bear their nickname proudly. Many generations of Hoosier achievement have endowed the term with connotations that are strong and friendly .
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In our next installment we return to the Deep South when we visit the 20th state, Mississippi.