Whatever the truth of all this, the fact remains that Tarheel has now lost all derogatory significance in North Carolina. The newspaper of the students at the University of North Carolina has been so called since 1892, and when, in 1922, the State bankers launched a monthly organ at Raleigh it was given the name of Tarheel Banker. Other nicknames recorded for North Carolina by Shankle and other authorities are Old North State, Land of the Sky and Rip Van Winkle State. The first arose naturally out of the geography and history of the State, and the DAE traces it, on the authority of Bartlett, to the campaign which made William A. Graham, apparently the father of the aforesaid Major Graham, Governor from 1845 to 1849. Land of the Sky is logically applicable only to the beautiful mountain country in the far western part of the State; Eastern North Carolina is far closer to the bottom of the Atlantic than to the sky. Rip Van Winkle State remains unexplained. It appears on the Brother Jonathan list of 1843, but is not recorded by the DAE. Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” was first published in his “Sketch Book” in 1819.
The palmetto, a variety of fan palm, has been associated with South Carolina since colonial days, though it also grows in other States. The DAE traces its use as a common noun to 1739. Palmetto State appeared in both the Knickerbocker Magazine and Brother Jonathan lists in 1843. During the turmoils preceding the Civil War palmetto was used in various terms associated with the Nullification and Secession movements – e.g., palmetto speech, 1840, palmetto cockade, 1846, and palmetto banner, 1860 – and at the outbreak of the war the palmetto flag was the shining symbol of the Confederacy. The prevailing American belief in those days was that the South Carolinians were an especially bellicose folk, so the State was sometimes called the Gamecock State or the Harry Percy of the Union. The DAE traces the former to 1862, but it was probably not new at that time. Both it and Harry Percy of the Union have vanished as the fires of the South Carolinians have cooled. Their State has also been called the Rice State, the Iodine State, the Swamp State and the Sand-lapper State. Between the Revolution and the Civil War those living on the low-lying coastal plain were often called Ricebirds by the people of higher regions. Rice State, however, is not recorded by the DAE, nor are Swamp State and Iodine State. During the years before the Civil War the inhabitants of sandy regions throughout the South were often called Sandlappers. In “The Scout,” 1841 (also published as “The Kinsman”), W. G. Simms described one of them as “a little, dried up, withered atomy – a jaundiced sand-lapper or clay-eater from the Wassamasaw country.” Sand-hiller was a variant. Clay-hiller belonged to both Carolinas. Thornton defines the term on the authority of a mysterious Ida May, as follows:
A miserable set of people inhabiting some of the Southern States, who subsist chiefly on turpentine whiskey1 and appease their craving for more substantial food by filling their stomachs with a kind of aluminous earth which abounds everywhere. This gives them a yellowish-drab-colored complexion, with dull eyes and faces whose idiotic expression is only varied by a dull despair or a devilish malignity. They are looked down upon by the Negroes with a contempt that they return with a hearty hatred.2
They were finally dissuaded from this diet by the Public Health Service doctors and nurses who began purging them of hookworms in the early days of the present century.
Georgia was listed as the Pine State by Brother Jonathan in 1843, but by 1872 Schele de Vere was calling it the Cracker State, though he added with some haste that it “little deserved” the nickname. Cracker as a designation for a low-down Southern white man is traced by the DAE to 1767, and from the start it seems to have been felt that such persons were especially numerous in Georgia. The origin of the term is obscure. It was used in the sense of a boaster by Alexander Barclay in “The Shyp of Folys” in 1509, and by Shakespeare in “King John” in 1595, and in this sense it seems to have been suggested by a verb common to all the Germanic languages, signifying to make a short, sharp sound, as of something breaking.1 But it is hard to connect the verb with the Southern cracker, so amateur etymologists have looked elsewhere. One school holds that many of the early crackers were teamsters, and got their name by their loud and incessant cracking of their whips. Another believes that it came from their eating of cracked corn. Yet another teaches that it derives from their manner of speaking, which sounded like a mere crackling to strangers. Crackers, of course, were (and are) by no means confined to Georgia; they are to be found in all the States south of the Potomac and Ohio. In 1819 a correspondent of the Lancaster (Pa.) Gazette reported them in Florida, and in 1856 a traveling English lady said that Kentucky was then called the Corncracker State.2 There was a time when Georgians bitterly resented Cracker State, but of late they seem to have become more philosophical, and for some time past the Atlanta Journal, which “covers Dixie like the dew,” has been maintaining in Washington a correspondent named Ralph Smith who contributes to it a daily column of “Southern angle, home-State stuff” headed “Crackerland in Washington.”3
At various times in the past Georgia has suffered even more opprobrious nicknames, e.g., Buzzard State, and also basked in some very flattering ones, e.g., Empire State of the South. The DAE traces Buzzard for Georgian to 1845, and during the same year it appeared in a list of such names in the Broadway Journal, one of whose editors was Edgar Allan Poe. Walt Whitman, as we have seen, copied this Broadway Journal list into his paper, “Slang in America,” included in “November Boughs” in 1888. He changed or omitted some of the items, but he let Buzzard for Georgian stand.1 Empire State of the South is traced by the DAE to 1857. It has been disputed by Texas, but is well deserved by Georgia, which is the largest State east of the Mississippi. Yankee Land of the South was launched by Frederick Law Olmsted in his once famous book, “A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States,” published in 1856, where he credited it to a native Alabamian. It still has a plausible sound, for many Yankee enterprisers flocked to Georgia after the Civil War, and the Atlanta of today has been described as a half-Northern city. But it is highly improbable that any native, or dirt Georgian relishes being called a Yankee, even in compliment. Goober State, yet another nickname for Georgia, is traced to 1877 by the DAE. It comes from a common Southern name for the peanut, traced to 1848 but apparently older, and supposedly derived from nguba, an African name for the same plant. Georgia is a heavy producer of peanuts, and the hams of its peanut-fed hogs are highly esteemed by connoisseurs. Before the Civil War era Goober-grabber was a common nickname for a backwoods Georgian, but it was also applied to Alabamians, and the simple Goober was a nickname for North Carolinians.
We have now reviewed the Thirteen Original States, and perhaps it will be more convenient to proceed alphabetically hereafter, beginning with Alabama. It is credited by the World Almanac, 1947, with the nickname of Cotton State, and Shankle says that this refers to its central position in the cotton-growing area east of the Mississippi, now in sad decay. Cotton States is a generic name for the whole group, traced by the DAE to 1844, with Cottondom (1861), Cotton Belt (1871), Cotton Country (1671) and Cottonia as variants. Shankle also notes Cotton Plantation State, Lizard State and Yellow-hammer State as nicknames for Alabama. Lizard State derives from an early nickname for the Alabamians, first recorded in 1845. The origin of this nickname is obscure, but it seems to be clear that it was intended to be opprobrious, for the lizard has always been offensive to Homo sapiens. Another nickname, Yellow-hammer State, is more flattering, for the yellow-hammer (Colaptes auratus) is a beautiful variety of woodpecker. But Shankle cites Mrs. Marie B. Owen, director of the Department of State Archives and History at Montgomery, as authority for the explanation that the nickname was suggested during the Civil War by the fact that the home-dyed uniforms of the Alabama troops had a yellowish tinge.1
Arizona is called the Baby State by the World Almanac: it was the last of the forty-eight to be admitted to the Union – on February 14, 1912, more than a month after its sister-State, New Mexico. There is, however, nothing infantile about its Kultur, for it was settled by
the Spaniards so long ago as 1580, and its Indian civilization goes back to a remote antiquity. Shankle shows that it has also been known as the Apache State, the Aztec State, the Sand Hill State, the Italy of America, the Sunset State and the Valentine State – the last because it was admitted on St. Valentine’s Day, and the others for obvious reasons.
In 1923 the Legislature of Arkansas, prodded by the visionaries of the Arkansas Advancement Association, passed an act designating Wonder State as its nickname,2 but in the past it was the Bear State, the Hot Water State, the Bowie State and the Toothpick State. Bartlett recorded Bear State so early as 1848, and in 1872 Schele de Vere reported that the local pronunciation was Bar State. California and Missouri, in those days, pretended to the same nickname, and there are bears on their State seals to this day. Hot Water State, of course, refers to the springs at Hot Springs and elsewhere. Both Bowie State and Toothpick State recall the Bowie-knife, the favorite weapon of the hardy blood-letters who wrested the Southwest from the Mexican, the Indian, the bear, the catamount and all lesser fauna. It was commonly made by grinding a flat, broad file, nine or ten inches long, to a fine point, sharpening both edges to razor keenness, and fitting a hilt or guard between blade and handle. The DAE says that it was named after Col. James Bowie, who was killed at the Alamo on March 6, 1836, but the available evidence indicates that it was really invented by his brother, Rezin Pleasant Bowie (1793–1841), at some indefinite time before 1827. Its popularity, however, seems to have been due to James, who used it with great effect during the latter year in a famous mass duel at Natchez, Miss. In this gory affair Bowie was brought to his knees by a pistol shot, and an heroic opponent named Major Wright ran upon him with a sword, seeking to dispatch him. But Bowie’s right arm was still working, and with it he plunged his Bowie-knife into Wright’s heart, twisting it “to cut the heart string.”1 How the Bowie-knife came to be associated with Arkansas is not known, for the Bowies operated in Louisiana and Texas. But the DAE shows that it was being described as an Arkansas toothpick in an act of the Alabama Legislature so early as 1837. The legend was that the Arkansans of the time used it not only for murder, but also for fighting wild animals, butchering cattle, cutting up their victuals, and picking their teeth.
California was called the Gold State by the Hon. Amelia M. Murray in her “Letters From the United States, Cuba and Canada” in 1855,1 but the DAE shows that by 1867 this had become the Golden State. The State did not appear at all on the Brother Jonathan list of 1843, for that was five years before the discovery of gold on Sutter’s ranch. It has, in late years, got much more glory and money out of its oil wells, orchards, vineyards, truck farms and movie lots than it has got out of its gold-mines, but the glamour of 1849 survives, probably helped by the suggestion in that most romantic of geographical names, Golden Gate. In 1849 El Dorado came into use as a nickname for California,2 but it was by no means new, and had been applied previously to various other regions promising fabulous riches. Shankle also records Grape State and Eureka State, the latter borrowed from the motto on the state seal,3 but neither seems to have ever had much vogue. Schele de Vere adds Bear State, also claimed by Arkansas, and explains that the California bear is a grizzly.
Colorado is usually called the Centennial State, for it was admitted to the Union in 1876. The DAE’s first example of the use of the term is dated 1878. There was a time when it was often called the Silver State, but this designation was disputed by Nevada so long ago as 1871. It has also been called the Switzerland of America, which is challenged, as I have already noted, by Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey and West Virginia, and the Treasure State, which is disputed by Montana. Shankle lists, in addition, Lead State and Buffalo Plains State, neither of which is recorded by the DAE.
The most common designations for Florida are Everglade State and Peninsula State, though it has had a number of others. The latter is favored by the World Almanac, 1947, which apparently reflects a local preference. The DAE offers no example of Everglade State dated earlier than 1893, but it must be considerably older. It gives no example at all of Peninsula State, nor of Alligator State, nor of Flower State, nor of Orange State, nor of Land of Flowers, all of them noted by Shankle as in occasional use. He also adds Gulf State, but this would hardly be a recognizable designation of Florida, for it is applied in the plural to all the States bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, to wit, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. The boosters who swarm in Florida have made diligent efforts to devise a nickname connecting it with the Fountain of Eternal Youth which Juan Ponce de León sought there in 1513, but so far without success. Ponce de León returned for a second search in 1521, and was killed by the Indians. Florida entered the Union in 1845, soon after the second Seminole War of 1835–42, but it seems to have escaped, somehow, being called the Seminole State. It was listed as the Shell State by the Hon. Amelia M. Murray in 1856, but this designation apparently never had any vogue.
Idaho prefers to be called the Gem of the Mountains, or the Gem State, but Little Ida has also been recorded.1 The DAE overlooks all of them, but the World Almanac gives Gem State. Illinois has had many nicknames in the past, e.g., Garden of the West, Corn State and Prairie State, but Sucker State seems to be the only one surviving. The DAE traces Sucker for an Illinoisan to 1835, and the World Almanac still lists Sucker State.2 The origin of Sucker is not established, though all the earlíer authorities seem to have derived it from the name of a fresh-water fish of the Catostomus genus, related to the catfish and plentiful in the Western rivers. This fish swam up the rivers in the Spring and returned in the Autumn. When the lead mines at Galena, in the far northern part of the State, were opened in the 1820s, they were manned largely by itinerants from the southward, who came up the river with the fish and returned with them. Thornton gives this as the origin of the name on the authority of Charles Fenno Hoffman, who visited the region in 1833–34.3 But Schele de Vere quotes the Providence Journal of some unnamed date before 1872 to the effect that the nickname originated in the fact that the pioneers, in dry seasons, would suck up water from crawfish holes through reeds. By the 1830s sucker had become a common term in the Western country for a gull or easy mark, and it has since got into almost universal American use. In the form of gone sucker the DAE traces it to 1832. The name of sucker for the fish is recorded in 1753 in the British Isles and in 1772 in this country. The DAE traces Prairie State for Illinois to 1857. It had been in use before that, in the plural, as a general designation for all the States in the plains area, from Indiana in the east to Kansas and Texas in the west. A writer in the Atlantic Monthly for March, 1867 quoted by the DAE, even included Missouri, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Egypt has long been the common designation for the region of deep black soil in the southern part of Illinois, surrounding Cairo, where the Ohio river enters the Mississippi. Thornton says maliciously that the name was applied to it “with reference to the supposed intellectual darkness of the inhabitants” and quotes the Oregon Argus for September 8, 1860, as alleging that the majority of its people were then “exceedingly illiterate,” but a contributor to the Editor’s Drawer of Harper’s Magazine in 18581 offered the following far more flattering etymology:
The Southern part of Illinois has long been called Egypt, and some have supposed it was so called as being a “land of darkness” – one of the benighted parts of the earth. A very intelligent correspondent of ours who lives there writes that the name had a very different origin; and he is desirous that it should be given in the Drawer, and then everybody will know it. He says: “This portion of the State was first settled, and afterward the Northern counties. The new settlements of the North had to depend on the South for their corn until they could raise it for themselves, and hence they were in the habit of saying, ‘they must go down into Egypt to buy corn.’2 This is the real source of the name; and as to the darkness, that is all in your eye.”3
Indiana is listed in all the reference books as the Hoosier State, and seems to have no ot
her nickname. The DAE’s first example of Hoosier is dated 1832 and comes from a pioneer paper called the Indiana Democrat. The month and day are not given, but the Indiana historian, Jacob Piatt Dunn, has shown that the precise date was January 3, 1832, when the term appeared in a set of verse supposed to be addressed to the readers of the paper by its carrier-boys – in the hope, apparently, of inducing them to give liberal New Year’s presents. Here it was spelled Hoosier, as now, and on April 4, 1832 it so appeared again in a news item in the Northwestern Pioneer and St. Joseph’s Intelligencer of South Bend.1 When, in 1866, an aged Indiana poetaster named John Finley printed in Cincinnati a volume called “The Hoosier’s Nest” he made the claim in a footnote that his title poem was written in 1830. Whether or not this was true cannot be ascertained today, but Dunn2 has demonstrated that no record of the publication of the verses can be found before January 1, 1833, when they appeared in the Indianapolis Journal as a similar New Year’s greeting from carrier-boys to readers. When Finley assembled and copyrighted his book in 1865, says Dunn, he “used his privilege of revising his work, and while he may have improved his poetry he seriously marred its historical value.”3 In both versions he described the Hoosier nest of his title as “a buckeye cabin,” possibly meaning a log-cabin made of logs from the Ohio buckeye (Aesculus glabra), said by Eva W. Brodhead to rot at one end and sprout at the other.4 In the Indianapolis Journal version Hoosier was used in the title, but thereafter Hoosher occurred seven times, and Hoosheroon, signifying an Indian child, once.5 In his book Finley used Hoosier only. It appeared four times in his somewhat shortened version of “The Hoosier’s Nest” of 1833, and also in several other poems in the collection.
Its etymology has been much disputed and remains in doubt. Thornton, in his “American Glossary,” called attention to the fact that whoosher was listed in a dictionary of 1659 and defined there as “a rocker, a stiller, a luller, a dandler of children asleep,” but there was obviously no connection between this whoosher and Hoosier. The earlier American etymologists all sought to connect the term with some idea of ruffianism, and evidence was adduced that it was first applied to backwoodsmen in general, not only to Indianans. Said the Hon. Jere Smith, an aged resident of Winchester, Ind., in a speech reported by the Indianapolis Journal on January 20, 1860:
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