Sitting on the floor Indian style with one’s legs crossed is a reference to Native Americans’ habit of sitting that way, a practice recorded as far back as the journals of French traders. Increasingly, though, the expression is being replaced with the term criss-cross applesauce. In the United Kingdom, this way of sitting is more commonly known as Turkish style or tailor style. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Indian Style No More”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Chuck from Indianapolis.
Hey, Chuck, welcome.
How are you doing?
Thanks, I’m great. How are you?
All right.
Great. What’s up?
You know, I heard a phrase that I’ve heard before recently here in my office, and the phrase is someone sitting Indian style. And I’ve heard that a million times since I was a kid, and the only reason I’m even contacting you guys is because somebody in the office, one of my coworkers brought up the fact that, wait a minute, is that referring to a Native American Indian, or is that referring to a native of the country of India? And I thought, you know, I never really thought of that. So I thought I would bounce it off of you guys and see what you thought.
Generally, it’s believed to be a reference to Native Americans in the way that they sit. You will actually find it mentioned in early trader journals, like the French traders that would pass through, and the religious folks that would pass through because they sat on the ground or sat on furs and not on chairs at tables.
Sure.
But I could see how there might be some confusion because that lotus position that you might know from yoga coming from Indian culture is similar.
Well, wait a minute. Maybe this has some licks. It started as exclusively a North American term, which is one of the ways that we know. It probably would have come to us through the British had it been a subcontinental Indian term. Instead, there, they use Turkish style or tailor fashion as in the guy who makes clothes.
Of course.
Yeah, and not Indian style.
Well, I have a question for you, though.
Sure.
I had this conversation with my son who will be nine soon. They don’t use the term anymore in the third grade.
No, and that’s the case with my daughters as well in their school.
What do they use in your school?
They say crisscross applesauce.
Yeah, exactly. That’s the same one here in Indianapolis. My theory is that it’s a nationwide change because to sit Indian style was seen as kind of reductive, not necessarily racist.
Yeah, I can see that.
It would be interesting to kind of pinpoint, okay, well, here’s the administrative change we’re going to roll out throughout the country. And apparently it went pretty well.
Yeah.
Yeah, when I grew up, we used Indian style, but we used it in terms of lining up. Did you do that?
Oh, interesting. Single file?
Yeah, single file, Indian style.
Oh, single file, Indian style. Interesting.
Do you know how your kids line up these days?
I don’t think there’s any cool rhyme like that for lining up as opposed to just sitting on the floor.
That’d be interesting.
Yeah, the crisscross applesauce thing is really interesting. But yeah, Indian style is out of fashion now. I know that we’ll get comments about, oh, the politically correct brigade has done it again. But really there’s no reason to hang on to it, and it’s possibly. I do know Native Americans who think of it as offensive, so that’s enough for me. And crisscross applesauce has that nice little rhyme.
And what I love about crisscross applesauce, this is an important folklore rhyme that existed many decades before it was used for sitting this way. It shows up in rhymes and street games and crossing your heart and swearing to die kind of rhymes, you know, like where you’re pledging lifelong friendship with crisscross applesauce and you do the gesture over your heart. And then there’s the crisscross applesauce to give the chills. You guys know this rhyme?
No.
Crisscross applesauce. You do all this touching on their back of a certain way. Crisscross applesauce. Spiders crawling down your back. Cool breeze. You blow on their neck. Tight squeeze. You squeeze the shoulders of their neck. Now you have the chills. And like nine times out of ten, you actually have the chills when you’re done. You have chills. And there’s other variations of the rhyme. So I love the fact that they’ve kind of recalled this old classic children’s rhyme from the depths of folklore and put it to new use.
That’s awesome.
Yeah.
Yeah, it works for me.
All right.
Thanks for calling, Chuck.
Thank you.
Take care now.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
What do your children use in school for sitting cross-legged on the ground? What do they use for being in line? And do they have any of these rhymes meant to give chills? Let us know.
Email words@waywordradio.org.
