WHY IS OHIO CALLED THE BUCKEYE STATE?

AN ADDRESS BY WILLIAM M. FARRAR.

THE name Buckeye, as applied to the State of Ohio, is an accepted sobriquet, so well recognized and so generally understood throughout the United States, that its use requires no explanation, although the origin of the term and its significance are not without question, and therefore become proper subjects of consideration during this Centennial year.

The usual and most commonly accepted solution is, that it originates from the buckeye tree, which is indigenous to the State of Ohio and is not found elsewhere. This, however, is not altogether correct, as it is also found both in Kentucky and Indiana, and in some few localities in Western Virginia, and perhaps elsewhere. But while such is the fact, its natural locality appears to be in the State of Ohio, and its native soil in the rich valleys of the Muskingum, Hockhocking, Scioto, Miamis, and Ohio, where in the early settlement of the State it was found growing in great abundance, and because of the luxuriance of its foliage, the richly colored dyes of its fruit, and its ready adaptation to the wants and conveniences of the pioneers, it was highly prized by them for many useful purposes.

It was also well known to and much prized by the Indians, from whose rude language comes its name, "Hetuck," meaning the eye of the buck, because of the striking resemblance in color and shape between the brown nut and the eye of that animal, the peculiar spot upon the one corresponding to the iris in the other. In its application, however, we have reversed the term, and call the person or thing to which it is applied a buckeye.

In a very interesting after-dinner speech, made by Dr. Daniel Drake, the eminent botanist and historian of the Ohio Valley, at a banquet given at the city of Cincinnati on the occasion of the forty-fourth anniversary of the

State, the buckeye was very ably discussed, its botanical classification given, its peculiar characteristics and distinctive properties referred to, and the opinion expressed that the name was at first applied as a nickname, or term of derision, but has since been raised into a title of honor. This conclusion does not seem to be altogether warranted, for the name is not only of Indian origin, as stated, but the first application of it ever made to a white man was made by the Indians themselves, and intended by them as an expression of their highest sense of admiration.

S. P. Hildreth, the pioneer historian of Marietta, to whom we are indebted for so many interesting events relating to the settlement at the mouth of the Muskingum, tells us that upon the opening of the first court in the Northwest Territory, to-wit: on the 2d day of September, 1788, a procession was formed at the Point, where most of the settlers resided, and marched up a path that had been cut and cleared through the forest to Campus Martius Hall, in the following order:

Ist. The High Sheriff with drawn sword.

2d. The citizens.

3d. Officers of the garrison at Fort Harmar.

4th. Members of the Bar.

5th. Supreme Judges.

6th. The Governor and clergymen.

7th. The newly appointed Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, General Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tupper. There, the whole countermarched and the judges, Putnam and Tupper took their seats; the clergyman, Rev. Dr. Cutler, invoked the divine blessing, and the sheriff, Colonel Ebenezer Sproat, proclaimed with his solemn O yes! that a court is opened for the administration of evenhanded justice, to the poor as well as to the rich, to the guilty and the innocent, without respect of persons, none to be punished without a trial by their peers, and then in pursuance of law; and that although this scene was exhibited thus early in the settlement of the State, few ever

equalled it in the dignity and exalted characters of the actors; and that among the spectators who witnessed the ceremony and were deeply impressed by its solemnity and seeming significance, was a large body of Indians collected from some of the most powerful tribes of the Northwest, for the purpose of making a treaty with the whites. Always fond of ceremony among themselves, they witnessed the parade of which they little suspected the import, with the greatest interest, and were especially impressed with the high sheriff who led the procession with drawn sword; we are told that he was over six feet in height, well proportioned and of commanding presence, and that his fine physical proportions and dignified bearing excited their highest admiration, which they expressed by the word " Hetuck," or in their language "big buckeye." It was not spoken in derision, but was the expression of their greatest admiration, and was afterwards often jocularly applied to Colonel Sproat, and became a sort of nickname by which he was familiarly known among his associates. That was certainly its first known application to an individual in the sense now used, but there is no evidence that the name continued to be so used and applied from that time forward, or that it became a fixed and accepted soubriquet of the State and people until more than half a century afterwards.

During all of which time the buckeye continued to be an object of more or less interest, and as immigration made its way across the State, and the settlements extended into the rich valleys, where it was found by travelers and explorers, and was by them carried back to the East and shown as a rare curiosity, from what was then known as the "Far West," possessing certain medicinal properties for which it was highly prized. But the name never became fully crystallized until 1840, when in the crucible of what is known as the "bitterest, longest, and most extraordinary political contest ever waged in the United States," the name Buckeye became a fixed sobri