In 1812, a bit later in the year than it is now, there was a warm spell in Boston. In those days it was called Indian Summer, and a clergyman in the city explained the term this way (he may have been making it up): “This charming season is called the Indian Summer, a name which is derived from the natives, who believe that it is caused by a wind, which comes immediately from the court of their great and benevolent God Cautantowwit, or the south-western God.”
But that’s not the only theory about the origin of the phrase Indian Summer. Some others are based on an oddity in the first recorded mention of the term, in a 1778 book written by an impressively-named farmer in the Hudson River Valley, James Hector St. John de Cravecoeur. He wrote that “…[the first snow] is often preceded by a short interval of smoke and mildness, called the Indian Summer.” Either there was a form of weather back then that we no longer think of weather at all (smoke), or there was something else going on — something common enough that at least in 1778 it needed no further explanation.
The “smoke” is mentioned in other sources from that period as well. A citation from 1824 mentioned that “…the smokey time commenced and lasted for a considerable number of days. This was the Indian summer…” Where there’s smoke, there’s fire (so it’s said), and in this case the smoke was apparently caused by a common Native American practice. What’s not certain is just what practice it was. One theory is that fires were set to drive animals out of hiding as part of a large hunt to provide for the winter months. Another says that the fires were set to clear fields to be planted the following spring. And yet another takes the not-always-amicable relationship between the Native Americans and the European settlers, claiming that the smoke came from fires set in the settlements to drive the Europeans out.
There’s also a theory that ignores the smoke altogether and suggests that just like Indian giver was a derogatory term suggesting unreliability, Indian summer really meant something on the order of “sure, it’s warm today, but don’t get your hopes up.” Which seems like good advice, since it won’t be too long before a cold front is on the way.
