Origin and Early Use
The expression 'Indian summer' has been used for more than two centuries. The earliest known use was by French-American writer John Hector St. John de Crevecoeur in rural New York in 1778: "Then a severe frost succeeds which prepares it to receive the voluminous coat of snow which is soon to follow; though it is often preceded by a short interval of smoke and mildness, called the Indian Summer." Its etymology is uncertain:
- Rev. Joseph Doddridge reported that in the late 18th century in Western Virginia and Pennsylvania, settlers used the term to describe the weather that allowed American Indian war parties to renew their attacks on European settlements.
- Two army officers who led retaliation expeditions against Indians for winter raiding parties on settlers used the term without explaining its origins, one when describing operations in Ohio and Indiana in 1790, the other in Pennsylvania in 1794.
- Catharine Parr Traill, in an account of her settler's life in Canada in the 1830s, described how she anticipated Indian summer "of which I have read such delightful descriptions, but I must say it has fallen far below my expectations" because "its hazy days...proved rather warm and oppressive" and periods of stagnant air alternated with high winds that left the trees leafless. She mocked the notion held by some travelers−not settlers−that heat from forest fires set by First Nations peoples "beyond the larger lakes" caused the return of warmer temperatures and offered her own theory that the heat derived from the fermentation of vegetation in the vast Canadian forests in late October and early November. She predicted the phenomenon would become less marked as the region became settled and wrote "I have heard the difference is already observable by those long acquainted with the American continent.
- In a number of phrases, the adjective Indian means false, and some linguists believe the phrase Indian summer parallels the formation of Indian giver, Indian corn, and Indian burn, phrases that describe something that is similar to but not actually one who gives, a form of corn, or a flame-induced injury.
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