Morris tribune., 1885-11-25
Tho Origin Of 80. X"

In the language Of the Choctaw In
dams one of the most frequently recur-
ring expressions is tho emphatic oke,
with which an affirmation or denial is
concluded. This oke (proLouAced with
strong accent on the last syllNbie) is
one of the substitutes for the copulative
verb to be, which is wanting in Choc-
taw. Oke, as pronounced i'll Choctaw,
has exactly the same sound as the al
phabetic pronunciation of the letters
. X in English.
The meaning of the expression, as
nearly as it can be conveyed in En-
clish, is: THAT is true; that is all so"
A few examples, out of many that
might be cited, will illustrate this.
1.-The Choctaw Indian is 4 good fellow"
is expressed thus: "Hattak api huma
Chahta achumkmah oko," in which
halifax api means Indian Qiterally,
man-body -red), achukmah means
"good," and oke is the copulative en-
preston, lit is So" In Rev. Cyrus
Byington's Choctaw New Testament
| the first sentence of Matthew, V. ID:
Eye are the salt of the EARTH" is
"gakni in huppi huchchla koke;' lit
orally "thc earth its salt ye; that is 50. y
To Gen. Andrew Jackson is attributed
the introduction of the Choctaw word
into our Anglo-American speech. Be-
fore the war of 1912, in voyages up
and down the Mississippi and in trading
expeditions overland from Nashville,
Tenn, to Natchcz, Miss, through the
Choctaw nation, he was brought into
frequent communication with the Choc-
tawS.
Gen. Jackson, as everybody knows,
was prone to the use of downright and
energetic methods of assertion. Hearing
this emphatic 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 ac-
count of the origin of o. X. has been
current in the south for many years. If
not true, it is, to say the last, ben tro-
vata.
No one who has ever read an auto
tograph letter of Gen. Jackson's will
easily credit the story that he was in
the habit, when he was president of the
United States, of indorsing, in kalten
blute, applications for Office with the
letters 0. 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 En-
glish photography as to fall into q
blunder of that sort. He may have in
dorsed documents with the letters o.
X. as a jocular 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 a posteriori Invention of
the enemy-to-wit, the whigs-during
the hot political contests in the days OF
the roaring '40s.
That the abbreyiation O. X. was
coined by Jackson himself, and used by
him long years before it passed into cur
rent slang, finds curious confirmation
in an extract from the old court records
of Sumner county, Tennessee, quoted
by Parton in his Life of Jackson"
vol. l, p. 1856.
"Oct. 6, 1890. Andrew Jackson,
Esq, proved bill of sale from Hugh
McGary to Casper Mansker, for negro
man, which was o. K" "a common
western mistakc,' adds Mr.. Parton,
flor D. 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 a brief way of saying, after
the Choctaw fashion, that the claim
had been legally made out?-American
MG1azine OF HISL01U.