Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1885-09-03
THE ORIGIN OF 20. K"

A Suggestion That jackson Got His
Famous Authorization From the Choc-
taw.
In the language of the Choctaw
Indians. one of the most frequently re-
curing expressions is the emphatic oke
with which an affirmation or denial is
concluded. This oke pronounced with
strong accent on the last syllable) is
one of the substitutes for the copulative
verb to be, which is wanting in Choc.
taw. Oke. as pronounced in Choctaw,
has exactly the same sound as the
alphabetc pronunciation of the letter.
o. X. in English.
The meaning of expression, as nearly
as it can be conveyed in English, is:
THAT is true; That is all So" A few
examples, out of many that might be
cited. VIII illustrate this. 1.-THE Chloe
taw Indian is a good fellow is ex-
pressed thus: Hattak api huma Chahta
achukmah oke. in which halifax api
huma means Indian" literally, man.
body red. achukmah means "good. I"
and oke is the copulative expression, lit
is so.' In the Rev. Cyrus Byington's
Choctaw New Testament the first sem
tence of Matt. 5, 13: "Ye are the salt
of the earth" is: gakni in huppi huch-
CHA hoke. literally: 1.-The earth is salt
We; that is SC"
To General Andrew Jackson is at
tributed the introduction of the Choctaw
word into our Anglo-American speech.
Before the war of 1912. in VOYAGES up
and down the Mississippi and in trad
ing expeditions overland from Nash
vile. Tenn, to Natchez. Miss, through
the Choctaw Nation. he was brought
into frequent communication with the
ChOctaws.
General Jackson, as everybody knows.
was prone to the use of downright and
energetic methods of assertion. Hear
ing this emphatic oke so frequently
uttered by the Choctaw people, he
Il armed the meaning conveyed by it to
the Choctaw mind and appropriated it,
out of hand. to his own purposes. From
him it passed over to the multitude.
This account of the origin of o. X. has
been current in the South for many
years. If not true. it is. to say the
least, ben trorato.
No one who has ever read an auto
graph letter of General Jackson's will
easily credit the story that he was in
the habit. when he was President of the
United Stanes, of indorsing, in kaltem
B'ute. applications for Office, with the
letters o. K, under the belief that these
were the proper initials for "all cor
rect" Jackson was no scholar. but he
was not so grossly ignorant of English
photography as to fall into blunder of
that sort. He may have Endorsed docu-
ments with the letters o. X. as jocu-
lar symbol of his favorite Choctaw
expression. The story that these letters
were seriously intended by him as an
abbreviat:on of ''oll korrect" was prob
ably, as Mr.. George Bancroft suggests,
an a pOsteriori invention of the enemy
to wit, the Whigs-during the hot
political contests in the days of the roar
ing '40's.
That the abbreviation o. X. was
coined by Jackson himself and used by
him long years before it passed into
current slang, finds curious confirmation
in an extract from the old court
records of Summer County, Tenn.
quoted by Parton in his Life of Jack
son." vol. 1. p. 1856:
October 6. 1890. Andrew Jackson
ESQ.,, proved bill of sale from Hug h
McGary to Casper Mansker, for negro
man, which was o. K" "A common
Western mistake" adds Mr.. Patton,
''for o. R.. which means Ordered Re.
corded. Hence, perhaps, the saying O.
XII
Is it not more likely that the o. X. OF
this entry was suggested by Jackson
himself, as brief way of saying. after
the Choctaw fashion, that the claim had
been legally made out?-American
Magazine of History.