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Discovering the origins of Indiana's mysterious nickname "hoosier" requires a knowledge of when the word fir t came into use. Most standard reference works (including the Oxford English Dictionary) erro neously cite as the first known writing of the word a letter written in Missouri in 1826.1 The error is significant because such an early refer ence, from a site so far west, gives credence to the assumption of Jacob R Dunn (writing roughly a hundred years ago) that the word had been a term of contempt in general use in the South before it became specific to