Entry · catalog no. 0045
nation sack
/ /ˈneɪʃən ˌsæk/ /NAY-shun sak
noun · Memphis, Tennessee and the surrounding Mississippi Delta and eastern Arkansas · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
A cumulative charm bag belonging to a woman, worn on a belt or string at the waist under her skirts. It holds her money, her small personal items, and — the working part — objects taken from the man she means to hold: hair, nail clippings, a knotted string, a scrap of cloth, a photograph, his name written out. Coins in the bag are part of the charm, not just savings. A strict rule governs it: no man may touch or open a nation sack. Women lock it away at night if a man sleeps in the house and put it back on in the morning. When one wears out, its contents are sewn into a new bag, so an old woman's sack grows thick with decades of work.
“She kept it on her all day and locked it in the trunk at night, because a man's hand on her nation sack would have undone the whole of it.”
Origin & Attribution
A regional term of Black hoodoo in and around Memphis, Tennessee, and the adjoining Mississippi Delta and eastern Arkansas. Harry Middleton Hyatt, interviewing hoodoo practitioners across the South between 1935 and 1939, found the word confined to the Memphis region — unknown by that name on the East Coast and in New Orleans. His Memphis informant number 1517, whom he called the Nation Sack Woman, gave him the fullest account of it, including the taboo and its use on her own mother-in-law's husband of fifty years. Robert Johnson, raised in Mississippi and Memphis and later based in Helena, Arkansas, carried the word onto commercial record in November 1936.
1936
Robert Johnson records "Come On in My Kitchen" on November 23 at the Gunter Hotel, San Antonio, in a verse where taking the last nickel from a woman's nation sack is why she is gone for good
1939
Hyatt completes the Memphis fieldwork in which he interviews the woman he names the Nation Sack Woman
1970
Hyatt's volumes begin publication, putting the Memphis nation sack material into print
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Memphis, Tennessee and the surrounding Mississippi Delta and eastern Arkansas · 1930s
Spoken by
Black women practicing hoodoo in the Memphis region; blues musicians of the Delta
$NATIONThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Fading90 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
41/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1936
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
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Citations & Sources
■
Robert Johnson, "Come On in My Kitchen," recorded November 23, 1936, San Antonio; issued as Vocalion 03563, 1937
commercial recording
■
Harry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo — Conjuration — Witchcraft — Rootwork, vol. 2, interview with Informant No. 1517, Memphis
folklore field interview
■
+ Cite a sourceHarry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo — Conjuration — Witchcraft — Rootwork, vol. 5 (1973), spell no. 13008
folklore collection
See also