50 States of Generosity: Indiana

We’re continuing a series at Tweetspeak—50 States of Generosity, in which we highlight the 50 states of America and give people beautiful ways to understand and be generous with one another by noticing the unique and poetic things each state brings to the country. A more generous people in the States can become a more generous people in the world. We continue with Indiana.

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Nickname: Hoosier State State Capital: Indianapolis State Bird: Cardinal State Flower: Peony State Insect: Firefly State Fossil: Mastodon State Colors: Blue and Gold State Motto: The Crossroads of America Song: On the Banks of the Wabash State Poem: Indiana

Years ago, a notice appeared in the local paper that read, “The Amish Have Moved to Charlotte.” That would have been my husband’s early relatives who moved to southern Michigan from Indiana’s Amish country. Every year that side of the family gathered for a reunion in Topeka—until one by one their numbers dwindled. For a while, they met in a local park, but the last time we went, the few still living gathered in an old farmhouse—and brought their scrapbooks and stories. I especially enjoyed driving through the countryside, meeting horses and buggies and seeing so many parked in the yard of whoever was hosting church that Sunday. My husband’s parents would sometimes drive 80 miles south just to have supper in Middlebury. We assume they went to the Essenhaus. The current extensive menu lists nearly 30 kinds of pies. His folks would not have winced at a drive that far just for the pie. Also, I can’t count how many goodies I brought home from trips to the flea market in Shipshewana. Our niece once lived in Terra Haute—which she called “Terrible Hole, Uglyana.” I’m not sure what led to that, but I do know that we did not take advantage of exploring this wonderful state even when we lived so close.

Native American tribes inhabited Indiana for thousands of years until the first Europeans arrived in the 1670s and claimed the area for France. France occupied for about 80-plus years when Great Britain took control after the Seven Years’ War (also known as the French and Indian War). About twenty years later, after the American Revolutionary War, Britain ceded the entire trans-Allegheny region, including what is now Indiana, to the newly-formed United States. The whole area was divided into several territories, the largest of which was called the Northwest Territory—which was later divided into even smaller territories, the first becoming Indiana Territory in 1800. Then on December 11, 1816, Indiana became the nineteenth state. Indianapolis AKA “Indy” with the official slogan of the “Crossroads of America” as the capital. The city is located along the west fork of the White River that branches off from the Wabash, the state river of Indiana and subject of the state song, On the Banks of the Wabash. The song was written by Indiana composer Paul Dresser (brother of writer Theodore Dreiser) and has some interesting stories. The river also inspired songs like The Wabash Cannonball and Back Home Again in Indiana—sung traditionally at the Indianapolis 500.

Indiana borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the south and southeast, and the Wabash River and Illinois to the west, and is the 38th largest state. Northern Indiana is flat and rolling, mostly farmland, with sand dunes along Lake Michigan. The northwest corner is actually part of the Chicago metropolitan area with nearly a million residents, but one can find “sand and solitude” at Indiana Dunes National Park and Indiana Dunes State Park (where you can see some of the largest beaver dams in the state and “learn all about nature’s engineers.”)

Central Indiana has hills and valleys and is the most populous of the three regions. It includes Indianapolis and our niece’s favorite—Terre Haute, where there is a small Holocaust museum—CANDLES (an acronym for Children of Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors), founded by Eva Mozes Kor, who survived twin experimentation at Auschwitz. There’s also the state “Bird” of Indiana’s museum. Central Indiana also includes several major universities including Ball State, Butler, Purdue, Indiana State, Indiana University (Indianapolis campus), and Indiana Wesleyan. Tippecanoe County is trisected by the Wabash River, Tippecanoe River and Wildcat Creek. What to do in Tippecanoe? Check it out!

Southern Indiana is a mixture of farms, forests, and hills. The “Knobs” is a series of 1000-foot hills that run parallel to the Ohio River and are worth a look-see. You might find me wandering around in the Hoosier National Forest, a 200,000-acre nature preserve, or checking out some caverns and caves.

Residents of the state are known as Hoosiers, but how that came to be is a little uncertain. Some think it may have been introduced by folks who migrated from the Southern states and used in their dialect to refer to someone from the hills or a woodsman, maybe derived from the word “hoozer.” Some have suggested that early Indiana settlers might have questioned “Who’s here?” when a visitor arrived and that those words just morphed into “hoosier.” The poet James Whitcomb Riley claimed the term originated from tavern brawls where ears were bitten off, prompting a finder to question “Whose ear?” the morning after. (I like that story best.) At any rate, the name was in common use by the 1830s and gained popularity with the publication of John Finley’s poem, “The Hoosier’s Nest” in 1833. Although it may have been seen as a derogatory term, Indianians embraced it as a source of pride that represented traits like friendliness, neighborliness, and contentment with the Indiana landscape and lifestyle. There’s even a “condition” termed “Hoosier Hysteria” that refers to the excitement surrounding basketball. Supposedly James Naismith (who invented the game in Massachusetts) said in 1925, “basketball really had its origin in Indiana, which remains the center of the sport.” Indiana is home to the NBA’s Indiana Pacers and the WNBA’s Indiana Fever (now starring Caitlin Clark.) In 1986, Gene Hackman played a coach in a movie called Hoosiers which was based (loosely) on a 1954 Indiana high school boys’ basketball tournament.

Speaking of Hoosiers—I have one. A cabinet that is. It once belonged to my husband’s great-grandparents, and his parents gave it to us many years back. We had it refinished, and it once stood in our Georgia and Michigan kitchens, but today it greets visitors in the front entry of our Boca Raton home. (I may even hear it whisper, “Who’s here?” when the doorbell rings.) I’ve been unable to locate the maker’s mark, but it could have been made by any one of several Indiana companies. The first kitchen workstation was created and sold by the Sellers Company in 1888, and eventually several Indiana companies also built them. By 1920, the Hoosier Manufacturing Company alone had sold about two million of them. Years ago I played with some words based on a prompt from L.L. Barkat’s book God in the Yard.

God, are you in the Hoosier cabinet,
porcelain white and cool
top rolled and history frosted
moved from house to house
to house to barn
to house to house to house
from south to north to south
How did you begin?
Where do you call home?
What stories do you store?

Indiana is a hotbed of creativity. The state not only churned out Hoosier cabinets, but also continues to churn out writers and poets and other creatives. In fact, from about 1880 to 1920 (the same time the cabinets were being built) the state experienced what’s been called The Golden Age of Indiana Literature. Indiana, and especially, Indianapolis, became a publishing and literary center. It produced Hoosier writers like Maurice Thompson, George Ade, Booth Tarkington, Theodore Dreiser, Edward Eggleston, Frank McKinney Hubbard, George Barr McCutcheon, Meredith Nicholson, Gene Stratton Porter, Lew Wallace (Ben Hur: A Tale of Christ – which became the best-selling book of the 19^th century) and James Whitcomb Riley—the most prominent poet of the age. The period also corresponded to growth in other cultural areas including the creation of the Hoosier Group of five Indiana landscape painters.

Indiana continues to support a rich community of creatives. The Poetry Society of Indiana is the state’s official poetry organization, first established as the Indiana State Federation of Poetry Clubs in 1941. They adopted their motto, “Poetry, the crown of literature” and began selecting a Poet Laureate. When the Indiana Senate created the official position of Indiana State Poet Laureate and chose Joyce Brinkman, the group changed their title, selected Peggy Martin as the first official Premium Poet, and rehonored previous Poet Laureates with that title. Nancy Simmons is PSI’s current Premium Poet, and the state’s current Poet Laureate is Curtis L Crisler who created a form of poetry called sonastic—“where a persona poem marries an ekphrastic poem.”

However, there was another who also held the title of Indiana State Poet Laureate. On February 12, 1929, on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, E. A. Richardson (“Big Rich”) read his poem “Lincoln, the Hoosier” to the Indiana General Assembly and was voted (though unofficially designated) state poet laureate. (Abraham Lincoln lived in southern Indiana from the time he was 7 until he was 21, and it was where he fell in love with books.)

The sky’s the limit when it comes to Indiana poetry and art. Even the airport is a hub for it, and if you are ever passing through, you should plan on a long layover so you can wander around Concourses A and B. There you can view the Indiana Windows created by British artist Martin Donlon. They are 14 floor-to-ceiling murals that take up 3292 square feet created from more than 2000 hand-blown panes of glass. They feature poems by Hoosier authors. I especially love this one by Norbert Krapf: “Back home on the ground we discover that the gift the great wings gave us is new eyes to see that this place where we live we love more than we know.” There’s also a video exhibit in Concourse A about the legacy of Mari Evans who many consider to be the founder of the Black Arts Movement.

Since it’s hard to choose a favorite poem from zillions of wonderful ones written by Indiana poets, I’ll close this this out with Indiana’s State Poem, written by Arthur Franklin Mapes from Kendallville, Indiana:

Indiana

God crowned her hills with beauty,
Gave her lakes and winding streams,
Then He edged them all with woodlands
As the setting for our dreams.
Lovely are her moonlit rivers,
Shadowed by the sycamores,
Where the fragrant winds of Summer
Play along the willowed shores.
I must roam those wooded hillsides,
I must heed the native call,
For a pagan voice within me
Seems to answer to it all.
I must walk where squirrels scamper
Down a rustic old rail fence,
Where a choir of birds is singing
In the woodland . . . green and dense.
I must learn more of my homeland
For it’s paradise to me,
There’s no haven quite as peaceful,
There’s no place I’d rather be.
Indiana . . . is a garden
Where the seeds of peace have grown,
Where each tree, and vine, and flower
Has a beauty . . . all its own.
Lovely are the fields and meadows,
That reach out to hills that rise
Where the dreamy Wabash River
Wanders on…through paradise.

Seriously, I think our niece should revisit her old stomping grounds. She might gain a new perspective on the Hoosier state.

Photo by Owen Rupp, Creative Commons, via Unsplash. Post by Sandra Heska King.

Poetry Prompt: Indiana Generosities

See if you can create a poem using any of the things you learned about Indiana or maybe about one about a visit if you’ve traveled or even lived there.

More about Indiana: Poets, Writers, Artists, Sights, and Nostalgia

What is a Hoosier?
The Word Hoosier – Indiana Historical Society Publication
The Meanings of Hoosier
Visit Indiana
Indianapolis Cultural Trail – an 8-mile urban trail connecting six cultural districts
The Beautiful Indiana Silver Hills
Top 10 Most Beautiful Places to Visit in Indiana – video
Top 10 Places to Visit Indiana on a Budget – video
Santa Claus Museum and Village
Kurt Vonnegut Library
Indiana Connection: Traces of Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln National Memorial
Michael Jackson Childhood Home (video) in Gary, Indiana
Spirit of Jasper Train
Guide to Airport Art
Martin Donlin – Indiana Windows (Don’t miss the video at the bottom of the page)
National Poetry Month Comes Alive at Indy Airport

HOOSIER CABINETS AND CANNED GOODS

The History and Modern Revival of Hoosier Cabinets: A Timeless Kitchen Classic
Antique Hoosier Cabinet Identification: History and Value Guide
A Pictorial History of the Hoosier Cabinet
Hoosier Poet Canned Goods
Golden Age of Indiana Literature (Encyclopedia of Indianapolis)
The Hoosier’s Nest by John Finley (a reading)

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
James Whitcomb Riley Museum – “The Hoosier Poet”
The Funeral of Beloved Hoosier Poet, James Whitcomb Riley
James Whitcomb Riley: The Children’s Poet
The Raggedy Man – recited by James Whitcomb Riley
The Raggedy Man – Animated recitation

Notable Hoosiers – Artists, Authors, Musicians, Actors, and more
Marcus Mote – Artist
Marcus Mote – painting of a stanza from The Hoosier’s Nest
The Hoosier Group (and where you can see their paintings)
Hoosier Group (Art of Estates)
More on Paul Dresser
Kurt Vonnegut Biography
Our Land, Our Literature – List of Indiana authors
Indiana Writers Center
Indiana’s Current and Past Poets Laureate
Indiana Authors Awards (“Great books are written in Indiana and by Hoosiers”)
A Conversation with Curtis Crisler – (there’s a paragraph about sonastic poetry)
18 Famous Poets From Indiana
IndianaWriters.net – Contemporary Indiana Writers and Writing Exercises
Poetry Society of Indiana
Indiana’s Poets – Indiana Monthly (2015)
Indiana’s Nonfiction Writers – Indiana Monthly (2015)
Indiana’s Fiction Writers – Indiana Monthly (2015)

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Sandra Heska King

I’m a Michigan girl who left a 150-year-old family farmhouse on 60 acres to build a hummingbird-sized empty nest in Florida, right next to the Everglades. I thrive on a good dare and believe there’s no age-barrier to adventure—whether it’s kayaking with alligators, biking too close to a rattlesnake, riding a rollercoaster, or committing long poems near sleepy iguanas. I take lever harp lessons; buy more books than I own shelves to put them on; drink tea, tea, and more tea; and eat M&M’s the proper way (one sweet circle at a time). I’m also thinking to paint my front door chartreuse (don’t tell the HOA).

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