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The happy hunting ground is a concept of the afterlife associated with the Native Americans in the United States. The phrase most likely originated with the British settlers' interpretation of the Indian description.

History

The phrase first appears in 1823 in The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper:

"Hawk-eye! My fathers call me to the happy hunting-grounds."

Historian Charles L. Cutler suggests that Cooper "either coined or gave currency to" the use of the phrase "happy hunting ground" as a term for the afterlife. The phrase also began to appear soon after in the writing of Washington Irving.

In 1911, Sioux physician Charles Eastman wrote that the phrase "is modern and probably borrowed, or invented by the white man."

References

1. "happy hunting ground". merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
2. Meek, Barbara A. (January 2006). "And the Injun goes "How!": Representations of American Indian English in white public space". Language in Society. 35 (1): 93–128. doi:10.1017/S0047404506060040. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
3. Cooper, James Fenimore (1872). The Pioneers, or, The sources of the Susquehanna: a descriptive tale. New York, NY: D. Appleton & Company. p. 183.
4. Cutler, Charles L. (February 2000). O Brave New Words!: Native American Loanwords in Current English. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-8061-3246-4.
5. Irving, Washington (1886). Astoria, or, Anecdotes of an enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains. New York: J.B. Alden. p. 191.
6. Eastman, Charles Alexander (1911). The soul of the Indian; an interpretation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 156.

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