US states all have nicknames. It’s not clear why a state needs a nickname, and some of them, like New Mexico’s (“the land of enchantment”) sound like the product of a marketing meeting in the state capital. Many of the nicknames come from some aspect of the history of the state — or even the general area; some of the nicknames arose for a region before the state even existed.
One of the stranger nicknames is “hoosier state,” which is Indiana. The term “hoosier” seems to have been first popularized in 1833 by the poem The Hoosier’s Nest. It’s all about the characteristics, habits, and activities of people who lived in what had (at that point) just recently become the state of Indiana. The “hoosier’s nest” is even explained in the poem. It’s “In other words, a buckeye cabin.” The poem was published in an Indianapolis newspaper, and turned out to be so popular that it was reprinted by newspapers across the country. And it was adopted, at least semi-officially, within two days of publication when the governor toasted Indiana, the Hoosier State at a big dinner.
But where did “hoosier” come from in the first place? It was apparently a pretty well-recognized term, and appeared in a diary entry from 1827: “There is a Yankee trick for you — done up by a Hoosier.” Before it was used for people from Indiana, it meant people who settled in remote, usually hilly areas in the south — another term that survived better would be “hillbillies.”
There’s plenty of controversy about how “hoosier” came to be applied to people from Indiana, though. One theory claims that there was a well-known general contractor who supplied laborers for the Louisville and Portland Canal. He typically hired people from Indiana, his name was Hoosier, his crew was called “Hoosier’s men,” and the term spread from there.
This is a little doubtful. For one thing, the Louisville and Portland Canal was only two miles long; it was built to get around a waterfall on the Ohio River in Kentucky. Plus it opened in just 1830, which means the term would have had to spread pretty quickly, and that diary entry from 1827 would be a big question mark.
Another theory, at least as dubious, is from the official Indiana website. “When a visitor hailed a pioneer cabin in Indiana or knocked upon its door, the settler would respond, ‘Who’s yere?’” (you have to say that out loud and fast, and “Who’s yere” is supposed to sort of come out sounding like “hoosier.”) Somehow this response was supposed to be more typical in Indiana than elsewhere. But back then people lived on farms, which called for pretty constant work, and any neighbors tended to live pretty far away. So it’s unclear how much of that visiting would have gone on, and if you did visit, whether you’d need to “knock on the door,” or if somebody would already be outside tending to something and see you.
An even more dubious idea — and this one was suggested by the same governor who offered that original toast — is that a Native American word for corn was “hoosa.” They grow a lot of corn in Indiana, the people who sold it were called “hoosa men,” and that turned into “hoosiers.” One problem with this notion is that nobody’s ever found a Native American language where “hoosa” means “corn.”
So even the hoosiers don’t know where “hoosier” came from. I say we give up and try to figure out something easier — like why South Dakota’s nickname is “the Mount Rushmore state.”
