Half-horse, half-alligator

A ludicrous appellation of boatmen and backwoodsmen in former days.

1809.  The back-wood-men of Kentucky are styled half man, half horse, and half alligator, by the settlers in Mississippi, and held accordingly in great respect and abhorrence.—W. Irving, ‘A History of New-York,’ ii. 79 (1812).

1812.  Curious Terms of Defiance. New-Orleans, April 24. “Half horse half alligator” has hitherto been the boast of our up-country boatmen, when quarreling. The present season however has made a complete change. A few days ago two of them quarreled in a boat at Natchez, when one of them jumping ashore declared with a horrid oath that he was a steamboat. His opponent immediately followed him, swearing he was an earthquake and would shake him to pieces.—Salem Gazette, June 12.

1814.  The Mississippi navigator who affirmed himself to be “all alligator but his head, which was of aqua-fortis.”—Analectic Mag., iv. 63 (July) (Phila.).

1816.  The great western road … is travelled by the west country wagoners—some of whom, you know, are “half horse, half alligator;” others “part earthquake, and a little of the steam-boat.”—J. K. Paulding, ‘Letters from the South,’ ii. 89 (N.Y., 1817).

1820.  Navigated by eight or ten of those “half-horse and half-alligator” gentry, commonly called Ohio boatmen, whose coarse drollery, I foresee already, will afford us some amusement.—James Hall, ‘Letters from the West,’ p. 47 (Lond.).

1823.  

1824.  We have often heard of a Yankee Dutchman, and we don’t see but a French Indian is just as consistent a character. We suppose he was a kind of half-horse, half-aligator chap. At all events he has a devil of a queer name.—The Microscope, Albany, Feb. 28.

1826.  When the warmth of whiskey in his [a Kentuckian’s] stomach is added to his natural energy, he becomes in succession, horse, alligator, and steam-boat.—T. Flint, ‘Recollections,’ p. 78.

1826.  They claim to be the genuine and original breed, compounded of the horse, alligator, and snapping turtle. In their new and “strange curses,” you discover new features of atrocity; a race of men placed on the extreme limits of order and civilization.—Id., p. 98.

1826.  [We found in New Orleans] boatmen, “half horse and half alligator.”—Id., p. 308.

1827.  He was a patriot to the very finger nails, and the steam boats, snapping turtles, &c., looked upon him as being destined to establish permanently the inviolable rights of his native state.—Mass. Spy, Oct. 24: from the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle.

1828.  A “salt river roarer.”—One of those two-fisted backwoodsmen, “half horse, half alligator, and a little touched with the snapping turtle,” went lately to see a caravan of wild beasts. After giving them a careful examination, he offered to bet the owner, says the Western Mercury, that he could whip his lion in an open ring; and he might throw in all his monkeys, and let the zebra kick him occasionally during the fight.—Richmond Whig, Dec. 9, p. 2/5.

1829.  A bully near the mountains, next to the land of half horse and half alligator men, commenced his journey with the intent of whipping Francisco or being whipped himself.—Id., Feb. 11: from the Georgia Courier.

1832.  A marine is a sort of ambidextrous animal—half horse, half alligator.—E. C. Wines, ‘Two Years and a Half in the Navy,’ i. 45 (Phila.).

1831.  John Bull had christened this son of his by the name of Jonathan; but by and by, when he became a man grown, being a good hearty fellow, about half horse half alligator, his friends and neighbours gave him the nickname of Uncle Sam.—J. K. Paulding, ‘Uncle Sam and his Boys,’ in The New York Mirror.

1833.  The backwoodsmen, even the half-horse, half-alligator breed, when boasting of their exploits, always add: “I can stand any thing but a clock pedler.”—‘Sketches of D. Crockett,’ p. 151 (N.Y.).

1833.  I’m that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator,—a little touched with the snapping-turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and stop without a scratch down a honey-locust; can whip my weight in wild cats,—and if any gentleman pleases, for a ten dollar bill, he may throw in a panther,—hug a bear too close for comfort, and eat any man opposed to Jackson.—Id., p. 164.

1835.  The half horse and half alligator Kentucky boatman.—Ingraham, ‘The South-West,’ i. 210.

1830.  It has been said that we are divided into three parts, to wit: alligator, horse, and snapping-turtle; and my colleague’s candidate for the presidency should have recollected that, when the horse was removed, there still remained the alligator and the snapping-turtle; one celebrated for holding on, and the other for destroying.—Mr. Hawes of Kentucky in the House of Repr., April: Cong. Globe, p. 349, App.

1836.  There are some first-rate men [in Little Rock] of the real half-horse, half-alligator breed, with a sprinkling of the steamboat, and such as grow nowhere on the face of the universal earth but just about the back-bone of North America.—‘Col. Crockett in Texas,’ p. 60.

1836.  I jocosely asked the ragged hunter, who was a smart active young fellow, of the steamboat and alligator breed, whether he was a rhinoceros or a hyena, as he was so eager to fight with the invaders.—Id., p. 186.

1836.  [We hope the Mayor] will prove a real horse, as they say in Kentucky, and let fly his heels at all street abuses. Or if he be only half horse, we should be satisfied, provided the other half be alligator.—Phila. Public Ledger, Oct. 22.

1837.  Your Kentuckian, with his horse blood, and his alligator blood, and his steamboat blood, and his earthquake blood, is no more to your real Down Easter than a racoon to a catamount.—Id., Jan. 12.

1838.  Stones, clubs and brickbats were hurled by the assailing party, and returned with equal violence: half-horse half-alligator, encountered all Potawatamie—a Mississippi snag was loosed from its moorings by a full grown snapping turtle—the yallar flower of the desart, bruised the nose of old Tecumseh—Bill Corn-cracker walked right into Yankee Doodle and made the claret run in torrents.—B. Drake, ‘Tales and Sketches,’ p. 92 (Cincinn.).

1838.  That “horse and alligator race,” now, like the poor Indian, fast fading from the West before the march of steamboats and civilization, videlicet, “the Mississippi boatman.”—E. Flagg, ‘The Far West,’ i. 61–2 (N.Y.).

1839.  In my previous travels I had met very little of that “half horse, half alligator” character so generally attributed to the inhabitants of the West.—John Plumbe, ‘Sketches of Iowa,’ &c., p. 59 (St. Louis).

1847.  The half-horse and half-alligator species of men, who are peculiar to “Old Mississippi,” and who appear to gain a livelihood simply by going up and down the river.—T. B. Thorpe, ‘The Big Bear of Arkansas,’ p. 14.

1852.  If … we traverse the prairies of the West, we shall encounter a race of men “half horse, half alligator, with a touch of the snapping turtle,” able to “whip their weight in wildcats,” and bound under all circumstances to “go ahead;” the pioneers of civilization; the halters of Indians; the truest of friends and the noblemen of nature.—Yale Lit. Mag., xvii. 177 (March).

1853.  A stalwart Kentuckian—one of that semi-amphibious ‘half-horse and half-alligator’ breed we read about in the days of Nimrod Wildfire and Mike Fink.—Knick. Mag., xli. 471 (May).

1858.  

1859.  

1860.  The Rev. Mr. Cobb of Alabama has been for thirteen years a member of the house, and a pillar of the crustaceous Baptist faith. He is a model man, of the type half horse, half alligator.—Oregon Argus, Feb. 18: from The N.Y. Times.

1860.  These half horse and half alligator sort of politicians are becoming a stench in the nostrils of the American people.—Oregon Argus, Oct. 13.