Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1885-10-14
The Origin of 20. *"

In the language of the Choctaw In
dians, one of the most frequently Oc-
curing expressions is the emphatic oke
with which an affirmative or denial is
concluded. This oke pronounced with
strong accent on the last syllable) is
one of the substitutes for the copula-
tive verb "to be" which is wanting In
ChOctaw. Oke, as pronounced in ChOc-
taw. has exactly the same sound as
the alphabetic pronunciation of the o..
h. 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 Indian is a good fellow" is
expressed thus: Hattak apI huma
Chahta ackukmah oke, IN which hattak
api huma means ''Indian" (literally,
man-bOdy-red), achukmOh means good ,
and Oke is the copulative expression,
~it is So" In the Rev. Cyrus Bying-
toms Choetaw New Testament the first
sentence of Matt. 5, 13: ''Ye are the
salt of the earth,'' is: gakni III huppi
huchchia hoke, literally: ''the earth It's
salt ye; that is So. d"
To Gen. Andrew Jackson is attribu-
ted the introduction of the ChOctaw
word into our AnglO-American speech.
Before the war of 1872, in voyages up
and down the Mississippi and in trad
ing expeditions overland from Nash
vile, Tenn, to Natchez, Miss. through
the ChOctaw nation, ne was brought
into frequent communication with the
ChOctaws.
Gen. Jackson, as everybody knows,
was prone to the use of downright and
energetic methods of assertion. Hear
ing this emphatic oke so frequently ut
tered by the ChOetaw people, he learn
ed the meaning conveyed by it to the
ChOctaw mind and appropriated it. out
OF hand. to his own purposes. From
him 1t passed over to the multitude.
This account of the origin of y. X.
has been current in the south for many
years. If not true, it is, to say the
least, ben trovatO.
No one who has ever read an auto
graph letter of Gen. JaeksOn's Will cas-
ily credit the story that he was in the
habit, when he was president of the
United States, of indOrsing, i'll kaltem
blute, applications for Office, with the
letters o. X, 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
Orthography as to fall into a blunder Of
that sort. He may have indorsed doc
uments with the letters .. X as joe
Il h.V g L
expression. The story that these let
ters were seriously intended by him as
an abbreviation of ''Oll kOrrect" was
probaf y, as Mr.. George Bancroft sug-
gests, an posteriOri invention of the
enemy-to wit, the Whigs-during the
hot political contests in the days of the
roaring 40's-
That the abbrevlatiOn o. X. was
coined by Jackson himself and used by
him long years before it passed into cur
rent slang, finds confirmation in an ex-
tract from the old court records of
sumner county, Tenn, quoted by Par
ton in his Life OF JACKSON. vol. /,
page 1876:
October 6, 1870. Andrew Jackson.
Esq. proved bill of sale from Hugh
McGary to Casper Mansker for negro
man. which was o. X" A common
western mistake" adds Mr.. Parton,
''fOr o. R., which means Ordered Re-
corded. Hence, perhaps, the saying
o. K."l
1t is not more likely that the o. X. of
this entry was suggested by Jackson
himself, as a brief way of saying, after
the ChOctaw fashion, that the claim had
been legally made out.