Archive for August, 2009
Prospectors needed grub, they looked for grubstakers
You can’t watch too many old Westerns or read a few Western novels without running into these two words somewhere — “grub” and “grubstake.”
The first was used most commonly as sling for food, “grub” — but it didn’t get that meaning from the Old West. According to Winfred Blevins’ “Dictionary of the American West” (which I reference a lot around these parts), “grub” started as a cattle term. It was “an earmark that consisted of cutting off the whole ear of the critter.” The use of it for food came form slang dating from mid-17th century Britain, according to Blevins.
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How did settlers identify distinct Indian tribal groups?
I have been a big fan of “Westerns” and legitimate Western history since my 1950s childhood back in southeastern Nebraska, and I’ve never gotten a good answer to this question: How did settlers and soldiers who moved across the Plains and into the West learn to identify the various Indian tribal groups they encountered?
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