The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1888-11-23
ETYMOLOGY, GRAMMAR AND lDIoMS
OF THE "hCOsiER LANGUAGE"
Educated Indiana Makes Poetic Material
Of Her Early OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES, Leg
ends and Noted Places on the Wabash.
Sources of the Ho0sier Phrases.

Tho country boy who picks up crlnold
fragment does not now call it an "lnjun
bead" My grandchildren cannot see, can
not be made to see, the man in the moon
who was "put there for burning brush on
Sunday night" They know nothing about
the big ''clearings," the log rollings and the
great heaps Of brush around which children
Of my time danced and yelled at night in i'm
itation Of Indians, and which lighted the
woods far around. Tho drumming of a
pheasant on log is no longer explained to
them as the uproar of witches and fairies;
they, alas! have never seen wild pheasant
and never heard his drumming, and if one
should tell them of witches and fairies they
(he boys, anyhow would ask, derisively:
''Do you see anything green in my eyeg' In
all this city l don't believe there is one
8-year-old who believes in Santa Claus
No doubt it is better that all should bo ed
ucoted; and we may now say with truth and
pride that Indiana has few native illiterates.
But there was great deal of fun in the old
times and the old ways, when every vicinity
had its odd local talk, every wild hollow its
appropriate legend, and every village its re-
markable and eccentric characters. In those
days $3.50 to 1850, let us say), it was COM
mon thing for all one side Of a county to be
in the backwoods state, while the other was
fairly advanced. In my native county, for
instance, all the townships bordering on the
Wabash wero cut by deep and often rocky
hollows and the separate sections and ham,
lets thus marked of were popularity known,
from the north to the south border, as ''Hells
Half Acre, !" ''The Barrens" "a sandy rldge),
''Sand Town." "Buzzard Roost, !" ''Arabia,"
"Mecca, /" ''South Raccoon" and "Silas Bow
ers' Den" In those days the traveller who
went ''up the river road" from Terre Haute
with q well informed native had every stage
Of the journey enlivened by blood curdling
legend-fact and fiction delightfully."- mixed.
Here, first, was Fort Harrison prairie, where
Col. Zachary Taylor whipped the Injuns;"
next, the sand hill where "Dutch jake" the
murdered peddler, was buried, and next the
ravine where the ''Bowers gang" was sup
posed to conceal stolen horses. A little fur
ther on was Armiesburg, where Harrisons
army camped on their way to Tippecanoe,
and near it the Dazenay town, where the last
Weaw Miami Indians fingered till 1886. Not
far above was ''Harrison's Crossing" whero
the army forded the Wabash, and net far
above it the Vermilion creek, which we all
firmly believed was so named because the
blood of Indians, slaughtered in a great bat
pens in mythology, the name gave rise to the
legend, for the creek was really named for
the soft red keel found in its banks, with
which the Indians used to paint themselves.
On the east side of the Wabash, some miles
away, was tho Devils Den," wild. rocky
ravine, whero 49, 600 rattlesnakes had been
killed" And on a neighboring stream one
may still SEQ the rock from which "Johnny
Green" the last Indian, fell dead into tie
pool. He had taken too much fire water at
the neighboring distillery few days before,
got up an extempore war dance and boasted
of taking part in massacre in which several
women and children were killed. He gave
dramatic representation of the women kneel-
ing and begging for mercy whilc he toma-
hawked the babies. On fine Sunday morn
ing soon after he was sitting on this rock
fishing when q bullet fired by an unknown
man in the opposite woods struck him in the
breast and he went suddenly to his place.
Imagine how many strange legends would
grow up around these interesting facts
In those days, indeed down to tho beginning
of the war, a country party was the occasion
Of unlimited good nature, Of fun and feasting
and merry plays in which the movers kept
sort Of time to songs in which all joined. Not
to speak of "Chicky, my chicky, my craney
crow" 20, Sister Phebc, how merry were
we, that night we sat under the juniper tree"
and others common to the whole country,
there were certain pieces relating to the war
of 1S12-15, mostly brought from Maryland
and Virginia, which have not heard in any
other part of America. One, to which the
boys ''choosed partners for march, ran
somewhat as follows:
We are marching down to old Quebec,
Where the drums gre loudly beating;
The Americans have gained the day,
And the British are retreating.
Tho wars are all DER, and we'll turn back
To the place wherc we first started;
So step up to that ring and choose couple in,
And cheer the broken hearted.
suppose you've all heard of jackson, the great,
And Perry, tho brave man fighting on the lake,
How they beat the British boys by land and sea,
And made them know their places;
How many battle has been fought,
How many brave maa has been shot:
So step up to that ring and choose couple in;
Now show your lively PAGES.
And then some Of the older ladies told how
they had got up in the night to SEQ the light
Of Washington burning in 1914 for in our
MARYLAND and O doleful ballad was sung
the exulting song about Jackson and New
Orleans, of which the refrain was:
OKaintucky, the hunters of Kaintucky,
It Is not often that you sc-e-ce
A-a-a hunter from Kaintucky.
And very often the old fellows would shake
their heads and express fear that If another
war came tho young men would not be ns
brave as their forefathers. But they were
all the same, and proved it not many years
later. Nineteen-twentieths of the first set
tiers were from five southern states-Nary-
land. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee
and Kentucky-and most from the last A
real Yankee was curiosity. Even q "Penn-
sylvania Dutchman" was received with some
mispivings. He could establish character
in time, but tho presumption was against
him. And this gives mo the etymology of
that Hoosier dialect which Is now heard only
on the stage or found only in Egglestons
books and James Whitcomb Riley's poems.
l; was derived from three sources: the ne
groisnas brought from the border states, the
local phrases Of the mountains Of Tennessee
and djacent states and q number Of literal
translations from the peculiar German once
spoke, in the valley Of the Shenandoah and
the adjacent part Of Maryland and Pennsyl-
vania Thus the Hoosier descendant of those
people said: "What for a crop did you make2"
literal rendering OF the German "Was fuer
ein," etc. Add the natural tendency Of un-
educated people to drop the 6 in the present
participle, to change the sound of e into that
Of short and to shorten phrases often used,
as ''ain'tn for oil the persons and both num-
bers of the present tense Of ITO be-" and you
have tho Hoosier dialect.
A funny popularity Of the dialect was that
the more negatives one used the more en-
phatic the sentence. Thus the stranger
lookin. for work asked:
"You don't know O. nobody as don't want
to hire nobody to do nothin' nowhere about
here, don't your
And tho farmer answered: "No, don't"
An ingenious native Of Posey county,
where the dialect was spoken in all its me9o-