Chit-Chat anyone?

[dday9]

I'm wondering where the off topics will go on this one word: yankee

[dilettante]

I think the word has meant entirely different things to different people in different places at different times. By rights it only applies to those from the former "New England" colonies, Massachusetts being the primary culprit.

If you look back a ways you'll see this usage more clearly. For example I do some digging into the shards of lost regional U.S. history. These are the times between the Revolution and last-stage Western Expansion, particularly the period of the taming and settlement of the Old Northwest but even ranging into the postbellum years of the 19th century.

From: Trouting on the Brulé River or Summer-Wayfaring in the Northern Wilderness published in 1880

1876

Without pork or lard the fry was done for. The next best thing, as a culinary expedient for serving trout, was broiling. We were now reduced to this. We had a patent broiler, heretofore unused. That utensil was now in demand. But when intended to be utilized it was found ridiculously unequal to the needs of the occasion. Broiling on an extended scale had not been contemplated, and only for a bit of occasional roasting to suit a momentary whim of taste, the device had been provided. But it had only a capacity of three trout at one toasting. Our forest-sharpened hunger was usually too keen and devouring to wait on courses of three fish for four men of robust and full-grown appetite. But Kaquotash luckily knew a thing or two about broiling a collective mess. He extemporized a broiler from a slender alder branch, and splitting it and placing eight or ten of the fish between the splits, bound together with thongs of bark, he thrust the branch in the ground slanting over the coals. Thus a whole batch of trout was grilled at one and the same time, and broiled and crisped to a charm. When we saw how much the contrivance of Indian eclipsed the Yankee patent invention, we indignantly hoisted the wire fraud and delusion into the middle of the Brulé.

From: The Bark Covered House or Back in the Woods Again; Being a Graphic and Thrilling Description of Real Pioneering Life in the Wildnerness of Michigan publshed in 1876

1834

The first Indian who troubled us was one by the name of John Williams. He was a large, powerful man, and certainly, very ugly. He used to pass our house and take our road to Dearbornville after fire-water, get a little drunk, and on his way back stop at John Blare's. Mr. Blare then lived at the end of our new road. Here the Indian would tell what great things he had done. One day when he stopped, Mrs. Blare and her brother-in-law, Asa, were there. He took a seat, took his knife from his belt, stuck it into the floor, then told Asa to pick it up and hand it to him; he repeated this action several times, and Asa obeyed him every time. He, seeing that the white man was afraid, said: “I have taken off the scalps of six damned Yankees with this knife and me take off one more.”

When father heard this, with other things he had said, he thought he was the intended victim. We were all very much frightened. Whenever father was out mother was uneasy until his return, and he feared that the Indian, who always carried his rifle, might lay in am-bush and shoot him when he was at work.

One day he came along, as usual, from Dearbornville and passed our house. Father saw him, came in, took his rifle down from the hooks and told mother he believed he would shoot first. Mother would not hear a word to it and after living a year or two longer, in mortal fear of him, he died a natural death. We learned afterward that Joseph Pardee was the man he had intended to kill. He said, “Pardee had cut a bee-tree that belonged to Indian.”

So contrary to common understanding today, historically the term wasn't only employed as a curse in the southern tier of states - even post-war.

[dday9]

Wow I'm impressed!!!

[SJWhiteley]

Wow I'm impressed!!!

...said the actress to the bishop.

[Shaggy Hiker]

That hat's not just false advertising.

[dilettante]

Amazing the things we "know" that aren't true and come from history-altering marketing efforts.

One of the big trade items in early SE Michigan and SW Ontario was horses, of which thousands were sold to Kentuckians who had neither draft nor warmblood equine breeding industries until after the Civil War. Indian ponies were a huge part of the volume, draft animals being an easier sell to Ohio and Missouri farmers.

A lot of what we "know" about "the West" didn't happen where we now think it did.

[Shaggy Hiker]

That's true. In fact, lots of people don't know that the Battle of the Little Bighorn actually took place in a suburb of Newark.

[dday9]

That's true. In fact, lots of people don't know that the Battle of the Little Bighorn actually took place in a suburb of Newark.

Really? I just wiki'ed it and said Montana.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Then you would agree with my statment that "Lots of people don't know...."?

[dday9]

Wait, did I get sucked into the chit-chat bs?

[Shaggy Hiker]

Considering how many true things lots of people don't know, it should go without saying that lots of people won't know things that I just made up....but this is chit-chat, so I said it anyways.

[dday9]

[dilettante]

"But if everything you say is a lie then...

Error...

Error..."