A nickname given at the West to a native of Indiana.
A correspondent of the Providence Journal, writing from Indiana, gives the following account of the origin of this term: "Throughout all the early Western settlements were men who rejoiced in their physical strength, and on numerous occasions, at log-rollings and house-raisings, demonstrated this to their entire satisfaction. They were styled by their fellow citizens, 'hushers,' from their primary capacity to still their opponents. It was a common term for a bully throughout the West. The boatmen of Indiana were formerly as rude and as primitive a set as could well belong to a civilized country, and they were often in the habit of displaying their pugilistic accomplishments upon the Levee at New Orleans. Upon a certain occasion there, one of these rustic professors of the 'noble art' very adroitly and successfully practised the 'fancy' upon several individuals at one time. Being himself not a native of this Western world, in the exuberance of his exultation he sprang up, exclaiming, in foreign accent, "I'm a hoosier, I'm a hoosier.' Some of the New Orleans papers reported the case, and afterwards transferred the corruption of the epithet 'husher' (hoosier) to all the boatmen from Indiana, and from thence to all her citizens.
There was a long-haired hoosier from Indiana, a couple of smart-looking suckers from Illinois, a keen-eyed, leather-belted badger from Wisconsin; and who could refuse to drink with such a company?--Hoffman, Winter in the West, p. 210.
The hoosier has all the attributes peculiar to the backwoodsmen of the West. ... One of them visited the city [New Orleans] last week. As he jumped from his flat-boat on to the Levee, he was heard to remark that he "didn't see the reason of folks livin' in a heap this way, where they grew no corn and had no bars to kill."--Pickings from the Picayune.