Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1885-11-20


Stiffness of the night. And there
was a great silence in the room.
THE ORIGIN OF 20. K"
In the language Of the Choctaw
Indians, one of the most frequent
ly recurring expressions is the
emphatic oke, with which an aflir-
nation or denial is concluded. This
oIe pronounced with strong accent
on the last syllable) is one of the
substitutes foi the copulative verb
to be which is wanting in Choctaw.
Oke, as pronounced in ChOctaw,
has exactly the same sound as the
alphabetic pronunciation of the
letters 0. X. in English.
The meaning of the expression,
as nearly as it can be conveyed in
English, is: That is true that is
all so.' \ few examples, out of
many that might be cited, will
illustrate this. 'The Choctaw lndi-
an is good fellow is expressed
thus 'Iattak api huma Chahta
achunkmah oke,' in which hattak
api means Indian Qiterally, man
body.red), achukmah means good,
and oke is the cOpulative express
ion. lit is So In Rev. Cyrus
Byington's Choctaw New Testa-
ment the first sentence of Matt. V.
10: 'Ye are the salt Of tho earth
is: 'gakni in nuppi huchchi a hoke,'
literally 'the earth its salt ye
that is so.
TO Gen. 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 trading ex-
petitions overland from Nashville,
Tenn, to Natchez, Miss, through
the Choctaw Nation, he was
brought into frequent communica.
tiod with the Choctaws.
Gen. Jackson, as everybody
knows, was prone to the use OF
downright and energetic methods
of assertion. Hearing this EN-.
phatc oke so frequently uttered by
the Choctaw people, he learned 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. IT not
true, it is, to say the least ben
trOrdto.
No one who has ever read an
autograph letter of Gen. Jackson'u .
will easily credit the story that he
was in the habit, when he was
President of the United States, of
indorsing, in kaltem 0iute, ap.
plicati0ns for Office with the letters
O. H., under the belief that these
we're the proper init ais for 'all cor
rect Jackson was no scholar, but
he was not so grossly ignorant OF
English photography as to fall into
a glunder of that sort. He may
have indorsed documents with the
letter o. X. as a iocular symbol OF
his favorite Choctaw expression
The story that these letters were
seriously intended by him as an
abbreviation Of 'oll kOrrect was
probably, as Mr.. George Bancroft
suggests, an posteriOri invention
of the enemy Ito wit, the Wigs
during the hot political contests in
the days OF the roaring '40's.
That the Authorization o. X. was
coined by Jackson himself, ant
used by hin long years before il
passed into current slang, finds
curious confirmation in an extrac
from the old court records of Sum
ner county, Tennessee, quoted by
Parton in his Life of jackson. vol
/, p. 1876.
October G, 1900. Andrew Jack
son, Esq, proved a bill of sail
from Hugh McGary to Casper
Mansker, a negro man, which wa
o. X. IA common Western mis-
tabe,' adds Mr.. Parton, 'for o. r.
which means Ordered Recorded
Hence, perhaps, the saying o. X
Is it not more likely that the O
X. OF this entry was suggested b.
Jackson himself, as a brief way o
saying, after the Cboctaw fashion
that the claim had been legal.
made out :
f Saved His Life.
!