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One story about how folks from Indiana acquired the Hoosier label is when Indiana residents in the late 1700s saw unknown new settlers approaching their remote settlements they would yell out 'Who's there?'. It became a tradition of addressing strangers and so common in the state that 'who's there' morphed into a slang nickname of 'Hoosier'...but that's just one story of many.
The 1833 Pittsburg Statesman article gave an alternate etymology, positing that the word sprang from surveyors mapping the state who encountered so many squatters on public land that they would call out “Who’s here?” as soon as they spotted cabins with smoke rising from them. The question echoed so frequently on the Indiana frontier that it was shortened and altered to “hooshere” and finally “hoosier.
The 1833 Pittsburg Statesman article gave an alternate etymology, positing that the word sprang from surveyors mapping the state who encountered so many squatters on public land that they would call out “Who’s here?” as soon as they spotted cabins with smoke rising from them. The question echoed so frequently on the Indiana frontier that it was shortened and altered to “hooshere” and finally “hoosier.
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