Hoosier Cunning: The Common Book Episode 1. October 2026

So what is Hoosier cunning? Well, we could get lost in the weeds defining the word Hoosier for sure, but let us instead focus on how I interpret that word.

It has nothing to do with sports or some false and dogmatic view of the state of Indiana as some fundamentalist paradise that the politicians of this state would love to implement via draconian and militaristic laws and enforcement thereof, and everything to do with those earliest of settlers who made their way here from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas via the Monongahela to the Ohio River, or via Kentucky and Boonesboro, via Micaiah Calloway and various of the Boone family.

those self-sufficient people with diverse backgrounds some foreign some a few generations in who set out to blaze their own path escaping civilization back east in favor of newly fertile grounds lands of plenty and of opportunity and all sectors of life that relied on hardscrabble work to make ends meet and survive Those who saved seeds, planted orchard, preserved crops, hunted, distilled, made wine, created folk art, built mills, and who knew what they couldn't make, they could rely on to trade with neighbors and friends to provide.

those who carried with them unique traditions forged in the old countries and also in the south and the east via the mixing of diverse cultures and peoples in a time where the phrase cultural appropriation had not yet been uttered those who knew that all men were equal particularly if they were poor but also knew that many had it worse than them being indentured or enslaved those who traded with the natives or who were integrated into their culture in various ways and for whom respect was a two-way street, knowing that we all were part of the same great work.

The Hoosiers came early to the southern tiers of the state.

at a time when the past presence of the French was still vivid and their myths and legends had intertwined with the natives, at a time when Napoleon's command who had survived made their way to caves and wrote memoirs in these hills.

They made nest houses, cleared land, trotted turkeys, set up stills to make use of existing grain, stocks procured from the natives, planted apple trees as a covenant with the land and to claim property, They faced off with bears, cougars, and rattlesnakes and other grave dangers, and they practiced the hospitality of neighborly help with corn huskings, barn raisings, log rollings, and the clearing of navigable streams.

Self-reliant, if self-reliant includes community.

They made medicine from local plants and from those grown from the seeds and starts that traveled alongside them, their companions, and they made time to tell stories by the hearthstone while cooking meals that healed as well as any modern medicine.

And of their spirituality? Were they Christian? Perhaps many of them identified as such, but they certainly were not Christian in the way that you think of it now, for they practiced forms of healing, divination, and other arts that resembled mysticism, and a great many likely carried the roots of esoteric practice from the old countries, past generation to generation, as either a quiet practice or as a more pronounced and socially acceptable trade— amongst them bibliomancy, writing tickets, palmistry, transference magic, and finding out of thieves, the removal of warts, and in some cases even Solomonic magic, necromancy, animism, powwow, and more.

The traditions ran deep in the Germans, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Swiss, and English.

who settled here and survived trying and dangerous times.

Sometimes they were passed down, sometimes they appeared as natural gifts like dowsing.

In Protestant England and elsewhere, they were viewed as illicit practices, but Reason told the practitioners that the praetor natural was just a part of the unfolding of God's natural roadmap, and that if one could not accomplish something by simple prayer, then perhaps an appeal to a lesser power of God's creation and ordain— think Catholic saints and angel veneration, or as the English would have called it, the old religion, this might be the answer to solving and or interacting with that which is unlikely but also not impossible.

Publications similar to the Blue Book Movement in France, The Low Magic of Farmer's Almanacs, and The Long Lost Friends, even occasionally grimoires, were incredibly useful and still popular, their pages worn and dog-eared by use.

The planets, sun, moon, and stars all held massive sway over every seasonal decision, every medical ailment, and every major life event.

In an era before radio, they often wore the informational entertainment of the time.

reading various plants and seeds for their weather predictions was completely acceptable and well understood this institutional preparatory and reactional practical magic is cunning hence hoosier cunning and it survives in small ways to this day.

Barn quilts? A made-up phrase to replace the German hex.

Various bird superstitions? A cardinal as a returned loved one? Counting the woodpecker's knock? Goldfinches are good luck? Crows are omens? Owls are something other? Seems strange.

The using of Psalms individually as one would a spellbook, salt over the shoulder, picking a random verse in the Bible blindly for the day, horseshoes for good luck, and on and on and on.

So, who's your cunning? It is the freedom of understanding the worldly prison without allowing it to confine you.

The freedom to not ask permission.

The philosophy of being blue collar and yet proud even when it might hurt unbearably.

It is the love of your people and the principle of being okay with just being okay.