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Although we have no definitive evidence indicating the source of the expression “Indian Summer,” if we step back to the late 18th century, we find references to this burst of fair fall weather in the writings of two military men who were engaged in campaigns against the Indians in what was then called the Northwest Territory (present-day Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and, my home, Wisconsin). Some speculate that in referencing Indian summer weather amidst accounts of Indian warfare, these men were intimating the expression’s origins. While not entirely implausible, the relative offhandedness of the references leads one to believe that the expression was well entrenched in American English by the mid-1790s and that these gentlemen had no intention of elucidating the etymological origins of the expression. In fact, it seems they were simply referring to a commonly understood weather phenomenon. Even in looking at the very first surviving record of the expression, appearing in J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur’s essay “A Snowstorm as it affects the American Farmer,” it would seem that the expression was well established linguistically, if not in frequent circulation. Crèvecœur’s description speaks of the significance of Indian Summer to the farmer, lending strength to the argument that the expression may have originated in observing the closing of the harvest by Indians during these last days of warm weather before the onset of a brutal winter. Perhaps more interesting, though, than the source of the expression, is the fact that it was first published in French, in a translated version of Crèvecœur’s English manuscript. Crèvecœur was a Frenchmen who, after immigrating to America and working as a surveyor, trapper and trader, settled on a farm in New York state. Having married an American woman and established a prosperous agricultural enterprise, he began writing on the glory of American civilization and, indeed, what it means “to be American.” His descriptions of the “good life” in America inspired the imagination of European society, including some 500 French families, to emigrate and settle in Ohio: Here [one] beholds fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields, an immense country filled with decent houses, good roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, where an hundred years ago all was wild, woody and uncultivated! What a train of pleasing ideas this fair spectacle must suggest; it is a prospect which must inspire a good citizen with the most heartfelt pleasure. It could be argued that well before James Truslow Adams coined the term “American Dream,” Crèvecœur was busy delivery the message of self-reliance, simple ingenuity and proto-multiculturalism: What attachment can a poor European emigrant have for a country where he had nothing? The knowledge of the language, the love of a few kindred as poor as himself, were the only cords that tied him: his country is now that which gives him land, bread, protection, and consequence: Ubi panis ibi patria, is the motto of all emigrants…He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Although Crèvecœur would become an important bridge in communicating the “American experience” to Europeans, his journey to notoriety was fraught with intrigue and hardship. At the height of the Revolutionary War, Crèvecœur sought passage to England via the harbor of New York, but was detained on suspicion of being an English loyalist spy. After finally being allowed to leave, it was in France that Crèvecœur published the French translation of Letters from an American Farmer, which Adam Sweeting defines as “a genre-defying blend of history, fiction and autobiography that belongs on any list of classic early-American writing.” The book became the first major success of an American author and as a result of this publication’s success, his other manuscripts, including “A Snowstorm…” were translated and published. Upon returning to America, Crèvecœur discovered that his land had been razed and his wife had died. After eventually recovering custody of his children, Crèvecœur held the post of French consul to the US in New York City. Ironically, during a visit to France, Crèvecœur was swept up in the emergent French Revolution. The simple American farmer who had touted the joys of an Indian summer was now an aristocrat in hiding. As the cold winter descended around him, Crèvecœur’s requests to return to America were denied, forcing him to remain in France until the end of his life in 1813. Sweeting, Adam W., Beneath the second sun: a cultural history of Indian summer
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Indian Summer
