Hoosier Heritage

The origins of the word "Hoosier" are contested.  Different stories have been passed down, some with more plausibility or credibility than others.  Some popular variants rely on the proposition that there was a Mr. Hoosier working on some project, whose men happened to be from Indiana.  According to these variants, the men on these projects proved uniquely hardy and industrious and the name stuck for people from this area.

One story goes that rivermen in Indiana were very good at "hushing", a pugilistic competition.  It is from these "hushers" that the word Hoosier allegedly derived.  Another story goes that the frontiersmen of Indiana would cry out "Who's here?" upon encountering another person, which sort of sounds like Hoosier.  One legend goes that our ancestors were so rowdy and our bar fights so vicious that people would have their ears bitten off, prompting people who found the severed ears to ask "Whose ear?"

A more likely (if perhaps less amusing) explanation is that the word derives from the Old English word "hoo", which means highlands.  Hoosier would be synonymous with highlander, with all of its connotations of roughness and independence.  While most contemporary Hoosiers regard the word as a benign demonym, it's likely that the term began with negative connotations and retains them for most non-Hoosiers who are familiar with the term.

Derogatory stereotypes often have a grain of truth to them, and I am convinced that we have more than our share of hermits with cars up on blocks outside of their trailers.  We lack the social graces of Southerners and the refined idealism of Yankees.  A Hoosier isn't appropriately described as a redneck, as redneck implies identification with Southern heritage and customs.  A Hoosier is, to borrow a derogatory term, a hillbilly.

While contemporary Indiana hosts several populations, the founding population overwhelmingly originated from Appalachia.  These primarily Scotch-Irish pioneers, descendants of the highlanders of Europe, changed very little from their ancestors.  Just as in their homeland, they were fiercely independent, restless, and clannish.  While the English and Continental settlers clung to safe and fertile settlements, entertaining cosmopolitan concerns about the Native Americans as "noble savages", our ancestors fought with them as uncivilized warriors - on roughly equal terms - and steadily advanced Westward.

To say that they "settled" Appalachia and the Midwest would be misleading.  Our ancestors weren't the settling type.  Even today, in Indiana, the descendants of the Scotch-Irish pioneers who arrived through Appalachia more frequently dwell in rusted trailers and small shacks while the business of establishing businesses and building affluent communities has been left to those of English and Germanic descent who followed behind us.  Even today, when there's no frontier left in America, we remain restless, standoffish, and fiercely independent - out of sync with a very settled, mild, and codependent age.

As civilization advanced from the Middle East and throughout Europe, the mountainous periphery of Europe, the highlands, hosted the last remnants of pre-civilized Europeans. While Babylon, Greece, Rome, and London were developing increasingly organized and refined civilizations, our ancestors were still wearing face paint and battling amongst themselves in the idyllic forests of Western Europe.  We are innately less civilized, and I believe that this is not only cultural. I believe that civilization eventually affects the blood, cooling the warrior spirit and replacing the uncompromising warrior mentality with a more subdued, patient, and meek mentality.

The specialists, craftsmen, and proprietors of the small towns and cities strengthen a nation in a way that the highlander can't.  They establish industry, build schools, supply munitions, and foster a strong economy.  However, the advent of the global city brings with it the advent of the rootless cosmopolitan.  Oswald Spengler aptly describes this phenomenon in The Decline of the West:

Long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste of country.

... In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman. 

It's not that folks from the trailer parks of Orange County or the isolated shacks of Crawford County are less intelligent than the Germanic citizens of Dubois County.  A cursory review would certainly lead one to conclude as much, but the variance is one in temperament, not intelligence.  The hillbilly is sharp enough, but he’s less patient, less focused.  This served his ancestors well in a more impulsive and violent past, but manifests as a handicap in a civilized present that rewards patience and punishes passion.

While the Hoosier may be less well-mannered than the Southern gentleman, he's also less restrained by protocol and less tolerant of taking orders.  While the Hoosier may be less patient with abstract theories and ideals than the Yankee, he's also less vulnerable to being brainwashed.  The English and Germanic Americans may have been the primary drivers of American economic and cultural achievement, but they wouldn't have had a continent upon which to settle were it not for our heroic and uncompromising conquest of the frontier.

This is not to say that we Hoosiers don't have culture, it's just more primal in nature.  While the civilized citizens of the coasts and cities conducted masterful symphonies, our forefathers crafted crude dulcimers and banjos from the wilderness around them and created powerful folk music.  While the citizens perused their classics, our ancestors studied our bibles.  While the citizens held elaborate and fanciful banquets, our ancestors got together on random occasions to party, play their backwoods instruments, sing their backwoods songs, and drink their backwoods moonshine.

The conditions we live in would be unacceptable to your typical New Yorker, our table manners would frighten your typical Georgian, and our parties wouldn't be tolerated in Western saloons.  But for all of its faults, our heritage may be unique in America because it's the least vulnerable to the challenges we face.  Unlike Southerners, we won't follow our leaders to oblivion out of deference to class and protocol.  Unlike Yankees, we can't be duped by ideologues with their byzantine logic games into handing over the country our ancestors fought to win.  It's very possible that we, and we alone, hold the power to rescue the American nation from the brink of destruction.

But to accomplish this, we have to lead the way, setting an example for other Americans to emulate in embracing their own heritage.  We have to stop and reflect on our Hoosier identities, celebrating what we retain of our heritage and reviving what we've lost.  If you pronounce "wash" as "worsh", continue to do so.  Embrace your Hoosier twang and resist the popular culture which equates our accent with inferiority.  If you live in a mobile home and drive an old truck, save that money you were going to spend to buy "respectable" things and start respecting yourself for a change.

Many Hoosiers live in nice homes, drive late-model sedans, and have never pronounced "toilet" as "turlit".  Indiana was settled by a variety of traditional Americans, and the objective is to embrace your tradition.  If you're one of the many people in Indiana who has been raised in the city or among cosmopolitans, you're in the enviable position of being able to embrace whichever traditional American identity you prefer.

The point isn't to accomplish some anachronistic equivalent of a Renaissance Fair, but to truly revive our traditional identities.  Just as the Renaissance artisans and philosophers reached back to the Classical Era to reawaken the spirit of Western Civilization, we need to reach back to the founders and pioneers to reawaken the spirit of America.  Luckily, we only have to look back mere decades.  Better yet, we can take the time to visit the elderly and isolated folks who continue to exemplify traditional America.

Tune out the trash being poured in from the coasts and turn up the local culture.  Listen to (classic) John Mellencamp with the windows rolled down.  Better yet, buy a dulcimer and learn to play traditional folk songs.  Attend a high school basketball game.  Better yet, get some of your friends together and shoot some hoops at a basketball goal nailed to an old barn.  Spend time with your friends and family.  Better yet, challenge your friends and family to a euchre tournament.

If you have children, or interact with children throughout the day, expose them to Hoosier heritage.  When they’re being persistent, tell them about Johnny Appleseed.  When they're exploring new places, tell them about Daniel Boone.  Capture their imaginations with stories about Davy Crockett, jokes told by Ben Franklin, and feats accomplished by Paul Bunyan.  Even tell them about the courage of Tecumseh.

We must reconnect future generations with our traditional worldview.  Otherwise, they'll have little choice but to absorb the one pushed in their public schools, in their morning television, and in their children's books.  They'll learn to admire the plagiarizing womanizer MLK and the corrupt kleptocrat LBJ.  They'll learn to reflexively frown on their own ethnic pride as "fascism" and smile upon the ethnic pride of others as "civil rights".  They'll dismiss Jesus Christ as a pernicious myth and accept human perfectibility through social engineering as a sacred truth.

Some of this process will be academic, requiring one to sit down and figure out what a Hoosier is.  But most of it will be natural.  When we stop assuming that our own worldview and way of life is inferior to the cosmopolitan worldview and way of life, the rest comes naturally.  When we turn off our televisions and start engaging with fellow Hoosiers who cherish their heritage, then the Hoosier identity will be reinvigorated with little deliberate effort.