American Language Supplement 2 (130 page)
Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
Claim was once made by General Emmett Newton, of Missouri, to having originated the phrase at Denver in 1892, when he was attending a convention of Knights Templars with his father. Newton, then a boy, was collecting badges, and a man smiled at him and said: “I have a better collection than you, I’ll bet.” Newton instantly replied: “I’m from Missouri. You’ll have to show me.”
Another:
Dr. Walter B. Stevens, author of “A Centennial History of Missouri,”
2
cites an incident in the Civil War when an officer of a Northern army fell upon a body of Confederate troops commanded by a Missourian. The Northerner demanded a surrender, saying he had so many thousand men in his command. The Confederate commander, game to the core, said he didn’t believe the Northerner’s boast of numerical superiority, and appended the now famous expression, “I’m from Missouri; you’ll have to show me,” to his note refusing to surrender.
Yet another:
W. M. Ledbetter, a former reporter of the Kansas City
Times
, said he heard the phrase first in Denver, during the mining excitement. At that time he was in a hotel where there was a green bell-hop. The clerk called to one
of the more experienced boys, and said: “He’s from Missouri; you’ll have to show him.”
Mr. Ledbetter said he frequently heard the phrase used in the mining towns, particularly Leadville. There were many Joplin miners there, and they, experienced in lead mining, did not know the methods used in silver mining. The pit bosses were constantly saying: “That man is from Missouri; you’ll have to show him.”
The last etymology was confirmed by Joseph P. Gazzam, an old mining man, in a letter to the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch
on July 14, 1941. He said:
I was superintendent of the Small Hopes Consolidated Mining Co., at Leadville, Colo., in 1896. “Big Bill” Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone of Butte came to Leadville with a number of gunmen and shut down the mines in the early Summer.
We had a sufficient number of native-born Americans, whom the Butte gunmen let severely alone, to keep the mines dry and in condition. We tried to arbitrate, but without success. In September, the owners decided they must either “pull the pumps” and let the mines drown or import labor from the outside.
S. W. Mudd, general manager of the Small Hopes, told me their plans. I suggested that, if they decided to import labor, they bring in miners from the Joplin, Mo., district, as they were native-born Americans and would not be intimidated. My suggestion was accepted and plans were made to bring in the miners. Operations were started on the Coronado, a downtown mine, and the Emmet and R.A.M. shafts of the Small Hopes.
“Big Bill,” however, decided to block this plan by destroying the mines before the Missourians came in.
About 2
A.M
., September 21, the Coronado was attacked and the mine set on fire. The defenders put up a stiff fight, but their position was untenable. They then came out to the Emmet, but we had a tenable position and the attackers were defeated.
The Missourians arrived in a few days and as the Coronado had been destroyed, they were all sent out to the Emmet and the R.A.M.
I distributed them among the old miners, who were told that the Missourians did not understand our system of mining and would have to be shown our methods of operation. So it became a common saying in Leadville: “He is a Missourian and will have to be shown.”
1
Wellman says, on the authority of Vandiver, that Herbert S. Hadley, while Governor of Missouri (1909–13) “tried to have the expression supplanted, believing it uncomplimentary” and “even offered $500 for the best substitute,” but if this is true he seems to have stood alone, for Missourians in general have always been proud
of it. Said Norman J. Colman, a farm-paper editor who became the first Secretary of Agriculture in 1889:
1
These fewer than half-score of simple Anglo-Saxon words contain a correct estimate of Missouri character. It is true that we are not a people who will accept as truth statements of moment which the maker should be able to demonstrate as fact.
Show me
, adds Wellman complacently, “is the watchword of a canny people.” Perhaps one reason why Missourians are fond of
Show-Me State
is that it has mercifully obliterated
Puke State
, which seems to have prevailed for many years. The origin of
Puke
to designate a Missourian is not known. It appears in the
Brother Jonathan
list of 1843, and is traced by the DAE to 1835. A humane theory, apparently favored in the State, is that it is simply a misprint for
Pike
, the name of a Missouri county bordering on the Mississippi, the county-seat of which is Bowling Green, the home of Champ Clark. In nearby Marion county is Hannibal, where Mark Twain spent his boyhood and which he later immortalized in “Huckleberry Finn.” There is another Pike county across the river in Illinois, and in the early days the two were grouped together as the habitat of a singularly backward type of yokel. In 1849 a good many such yokels flocked to California, and there they were known as
Pike countyans
, a term which gradually came to embrace any newcomer of rustic aspect, whatever his origin.
2
But Missourians were called
Pukes
some time before this, and it is not easy to believe that the term began as a corruption of
Pike
.
3
Bullion
State
is traced by the DAE to 1848, and is thought to have been suggested by
Old Bullion
, the sobriquet of Thomas Hart Benton (1782–1858), Senator from Missouri from 1821 to 1855 and a conspicuous advocate of a metallic currency.
Montana, in its earlier days, was the
Bonanza State
and the
Stubtoe State
, the first referring to its mineral riches and the second to its precipitous slopes, but it is now, because of its mining and smelting industry, the
Treasure State
.
1
Nebraska was listed by the
World
Almanac, in 1922, as the
Antelope State
and the
Black Water State
, but is, by formal act of its Legislature, the
Tree Planters State
. This designation was adopted by a resolution approved by the Governor on April 4, 1895. The resolution explained that the nicknames before prevailing were “not in harmony” with the State’s “history, industry, or ambition.”
2
The New International Encyclopedia made it the
Blackwater State
in 1916, “from the dark color of its rivers,” with
Tree Planter State
(in the singular) as an alternative. Shankle adds
Bug-eating State
and
Corn Huskers’ State
. The DAE lists none of these save
Tree Planters State
, but notes that
Bugeater
, as a nickname for a Nebraskan, goes back to 1872, and quotes
American Notes & Queries
, 1888, to the effect that it was used derisively “by travelers on account of the poverty-stricken appearance of many parts of the State.” Nebraska, like Kansas, has suffered frequently from the more murderous and fantastic acts of God, and has produced a long line of statesmen pledged to prevent them by legislation, headed by William Jennings Bryan.
Bug-eating State
, according to Shankle, does not imply any hint that the human inhabitants ever ate bugs, but simply that they were the favored diet of a local bat,
Caprimulgus europeus. Cornhuskers
was at first applied to the University of Nebraska football eleven, and was only later extended to the State and its general population.
Nevada, according to the
World
Almanac for 1947, prefers to be called the
Battle-born State
, to recall the fact that it was admitted to the Union on October 31, 1864, while the Civil War was raging, but it is usually called the
Sage-brush State
or the
Silver State
,
1
with many votes, since the rise of Reno, for the
Divorce State. Sage-brush State
has been challenged by Wyoming and
Silver State
by Colorado.
Sage State
and
Sage-hen State
have also been heard, the first, like
Sage-brush State
, in compliment to
Artemisia tridentata
, which is the State flower, and the second in compliment to
Centrocercus urophasianus
, in the early days the chief victual of the pioneers.
Centrocercus
still feeds on
Artemisia
and acquires thereby a flavor seldom to the taste of a tenderfoot.
New Mexico glories in the plausible appellation of the
Sunshine State
, but has also been called the
Spanish State
, the
Cactus State
, the
Land of the Cactus
, the
Land of the Montezumas
, the
Land of the Delight Makers
, the
Land of Heart’s Desire
, the
Land of Opportunity
, and the
Land of Enchantment
, the last five being the inventions of boosters. Which brings us to North Dakota, the
Sioux State
, with
Flickertail State, Great Central State
and
Land of the Dakotas
lurking in the background. The Sioux Indians roved the wilds that are now North Dakota for many years, and were hostile when the first white settlers appeared. In 1851 they were induced to cede some of their land to the invaders, but it was a long while before they became reconciled to the boons of civilization.
Flickertail State
comes from the popular name of
Citellus richardsonii
, a ground squirrel which, according to a local authority cited by Shankle, is found in North Dakota only.
Ohio, the first of the Middle Western States to be admitted to the Union (1803), is the
Buckeye State
, and has been recorded as such since 1835. It appears under that appellation on the
Brother Jonathan
list of 1843, and on all other lists that I am aware of. During the first years of the Nineteenth Century it was often called the
Yankee State
, apparently in allusion to the fact that many of its settlers came from New England, but that designation was abandoned long ago. There was a time when some of its boosters, having Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, McKinley, Taft and
Harding in mind, claimed for it the nickname of
Mother of Presidents
, once borne by Virginia, but that project blew up after the débâche of the Hon. James M. Cox in 1920.
Buckeye
is derived from the name of a native horse-chestnut (
Aesculus glabra
), so called, according to Schele de Vere, because of “the resemblance its fruit bears to a deer’s eye.” The term was first used for the tree in 1784 or thereabout, but when and why it came to be applied to the people of Ohio is not known. According to William M. Farrar, a local historian quoted by Shankle,
1
it was because of the following incident:
The first court conducted by the settlers of Ohio was located at Marietta in a large wooden fortress known as the Campus Martius. On September 2, 1788, while the judges were marching in a body to this fortification a Colonel Sprout, who led the procession with glittering sword and was a very tall, erect man, six feet, four inches in height, so impressed a group of onlooking Indians that they shouted “Hetuck! Hetuck!,” meaning Big Buckeye. It was that incident, coupled with the abundance of the buckeye tree, which caused
Buckeye State
to be applied to Ohio.
This tale is far from persuasive, but all the authorities seem to agree that
Buckeye
for an Ohioan was somehow borrowed from the name of the tree. It goes back to 1823. There is a weekly called the
Buckeye
at Archibald (population, 1185), another called the
Buckeye State
at Lisbon, a third called the
Buckeye News
at Lithopolis, a fourth called
Buckeye Lake Topics
at New Concord, and a
Buckeye Grocer
at Springfield.
Oklahoma is the
Sooner State
, which is borrowed from the term used to designate the early settlers who sneaked across the border before the land of the State was thrown open to white settlement. The proclamation of President Benjamin Harrison opened it as of noon of April 22, 1889. At that time, about 20,000 progenitors and predecessors of the later
Okies
were gathered along the border, ready to rush in, hoping to find Utopia. Unhappily, many of them discovered, when they came to likely looking tracts, that there were claimants there ahead of them. How these claimants got in was not determined officially, but many of them succeeded in holding their claims. They were called
sooners
, and in a little while the term began to be applied to all the citizens of the State. The DAE notes that by 1892 it had been extended to any one of “that
numerous class of … people who insist upon crossing bridges before they come to them.” The
sooner dog
, not listed by the DAE, had no relation to the human
sooner:
he was one who would sooner fight than eat. In England, according to Eric Partridge,
1
he was one who “would sooner feed than fight.” With this latter sense in mind,
sooner
became British naval slang for a shirker. Shankle lists two other nicknames for Oklahoma – the
Boomer’s Paradise
and the
Land of the Red People
. The latter is based on the theory that the name of the State is derived from a Choctaw word meaning red men or red people.
Oregon is the
Beaver State
officially, but has been known as the
Sunset State
, the
Web-foot State
and the
Hard-case State. Sunset State
was once disputed by Arizona, but now seems to be in the public domain.
Hard-case State
, which is traced by the DAE to 1845, had reference to the large number of evil characters who flocked into the Oregon country in the early days: their descendants are now austere Rotarians and Shriners.
Hard case
, to designate such a character, is marked an Americanism by the DAE and run back to 1842. Schele de Vere, in his manuscript notes to his “Americanisms,” noted both
Old Webfoot
and the
Land of Red Apples
as designations for Oregon
c
. 1873.
Webfoot
, for a citizen of the State, is traced by Charles J. Lovell to 1853. The early examples of its use show clearly that it was suggested by the copious rainfalls between the Cascade Range and the Pacific Ocean. At Astoria, the first settlement in the valley of the Columbia, it is 77.2 inches a year, as compared to 42.87 inches at New York City and 33.5 inches at Chicago. Mr. Leo C. Dean of the Salem
Capital Press
tells me that the State newspapers always make
Webfoots
, not
Webfeet
, the plural of
Webfoot
. To use
Webfeet
would be as gross a gaucherie as to make
meese
the plural of
moose
.
