The Word Hoosier; John Finley Indiana Historical Society Publications, Volume IV, Number 2   By: Jacob Piatt Dunn

VOLUME IV NUMBER 2

THE WORD HOOSIER

By JACOB PIATT DUNN

AND

JOHN FINLEY

By MRS. SARAH A. WRIGLEY (His Daughter)

INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS MERRILL COMPANY 1907

THE WORD "HOOSIER."

During the period of about three quarters of a century in which the State of Indiana and its people have been designated by the word "Hoosier," there has been a large amount of discussion of the origin and meaning of the term, but with a notable lack of any satisfactory result. Some of these discussions have been almost wholly conjectural in character, but others have been more methodical, and of the latter the latest and most exhaustive that of Mr. Meredith Nicholson[1] sums up the results in the statement "The origin of the term 'Hoosier' is not known with certainty." Indeed the statement might properly have been made much broader, for a consideration of the various theories offered leaves the unprejudiced investigator with the feeling that the real solution of the problem has not even been suggested. This lack of satisfactory conclusions, however, may be of some value, for it strongly suggests the probability that the various theorists have made some false assumption of fact, and have thus been thrown on a false scent, at the very beginning of their investigations.

As is natural in such a case, there has been much of assertion of what was merely conjectural, often accompanied by the pioneer's effort to make evidence of his theory by the statement that he was "in Indiana at the time and knows the facts." The acceptance of all such testimony would necessarily lead to the adoption of several conflicting conclusions. In addition to this cause of error, there have crept into the discussion several misstatements of fact that have been commonly adopted, and it is evident that in order to reach any reliable conclusion now, it will be necessary to examine the facts critically and ascertain what are tenable.

The traditional belief in Indiana is that the word was first put in print by John Finley, in his poem "The Hoosiers Nest," and this is noted by Berry Sulgrove, who was certainly as well acquainted with Indiana tradition as any man of his time.[2] This belief is at least probably well founded, for up to the present time no prior use of the word in print has been discovered. This poem attracted much attention at the time, and was unquestionably the chief cause of the widespread adoption of the word in its application to Indiana, for which reasons it becomes a natural starting point in the inquiry.