Happy hunting ground
{{short description|American Indian concept of the afterlife}}
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The happy hunting ground is a concept of the afterlife associated with the Native Americans in the United States.{{cite web|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/happy%20hunting%20ground|title=happy hunting ground|website=merriam-webster.com|access-date=6 October 2020}} The phrase most likely originated with the British settlers' interpretation of the Indian description.{{cite journal|last1=Meek|first1=Barbara A.|date=January 2006|title=And the Injun goes "How!": Representations of American Indian English in white public space |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231884970|journal=Language in Society |volume=35|issue=1|pages=93–128|doi=10.1017/S0047404506060040|access-date=6 October 2020|doi-access=free}}
History
The phrase first appears in 1823 in The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper:
{{quote|"Hawk-eye! My fathers call me to the happy hunting-grounds."{{cite book|last=Cooper|first=James Fenimore|date=1872 |title=The Pioneers, or, The sources of the Susquehanna: a descriptive tale|url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008885782 |location=New York, NY|publisher=D. Appleton & Company|page=183}}}}
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.{{cite book|last=Cutler|first=Charles L.|date=February 2000|title=O Brave New Words!: Native American Loanwords in Current English|url=https://www.oupress.com/books/9781789/o-brave-new-words|location=Norman, OK|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|page=132|isbn=978-0-8061-3246-4}} The phrase also began to appear soon after in the writing of Washington Irving.{{cite book|last=Irving|first=Washington|date=1886|title=Astoria, or, Anecdotes of an enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains|url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000279465|location=New York|publisher=J.B. Alden|page=191}}
In 1911, Sioux physician Charles Eastman wrote that the phrase "is modern and probably borrowed, or invented by the white man."{{cite book|last=Eastman|first=Charles Alexander|date=1911|title=The soul of the Indian; an interpretation|url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000559708|location=Boston|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Company|page=156}}
References
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{{Heaven}}
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