shell-bark

[George Thompson]

     The Forcible Argument. -- "Gentlemen of the jury," said a hoosier
lawyer, addressing a real shell-bark jury, "I say that ere magnanimous sun
shines in the heavens, though you can't see it, kase it's behind a cloud;
but you know it, though I can't prove it; so my client, who rises airly and
hunts coons like an honest man, has a good case, though he can't prove it.  Now
if you believe what I tell you a bout the sun, you are bound on your bible
oaths to believe what I tell you about my client's case, and if you don't
then you call me a liar, and that I'll be squatawa'd if I'll stand it
anyhow; so if you don't want to swear false and have no trouble, you'd
better give us our case."

     New-York Daily Express, August 11, 1837, p. 2, col. 5


"Shell-bark" seems not to be in the OED; I think it is in DARE.
"Hoosier" is in the OED from 1826, but note the typo in the quotation:
1826    in *Chicago
Tribune<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:32445/view/Entry/88346?rskey=rFElqc&result=1&isAdvanced=true>
* (1949) 2 June 20/3   The Indiana hoosiers that came out last fall is
settled from 2 to 4 milds of us.
"squatawa'd" --- ???

GAT

--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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