Origination of the word "Draw"

After Iowa's Storyteller Lee Kline's weekly visit on Friday, there has been quite a bit of talk generated about the origination of the term "draw".  Check out Lee's visit here, then read more below:

Here is an e-mail we recieved that nails it down pretty well, thanks Marcia for helping us out:

Dear Mr. Kline:

I was driving to my office after lunch this past Friday when I heard you telling stories on “The Big Show” about the “draw” near your childhood home in Conrad. That led to your pondering if others know or use the term “draw” as you did, where the term came from, and what, specifically, it means.

 Yes, I can affirm that other people use it and not just in Iowa. I grew up hearing people talk about “draws”: specifically that “sand draw,” not too far from my home in a small farm community in far southwest Nebraska. Thus I know well the term as you used it.

I grew up knowing what a draw was. But not knowing. I can remember often wondering what exactly a draw was? That is, was that dip in the landscape a draw or did another term apply? Thus, your question caught my fancy and sent me to my dictionary. 

I like Webster’s Collegiate definition best, “draw n (1663)  . . . 6 :  a gully shallower than a ravine.“ That pretty much nails it in my mind, matching exactly those draws in the world of my childhood where family still lives.

But for the (1663) date, I had to go to the Oxford English Dictionary (online, 2018). Turns out, “draw,” used with the definition we are interested in is a U.S. term and dates only to 1882.

9. A natural ditch or drain that draws the water off a piece of land. Also, a shallow valley containing a stream. U.S.

1882   W. A. Baillie-Grohman Camps in Rockies xii. 340   Among the rough and steep chains of mountains full of ‘draws’, ‘pockets’, and gulches.

1884   Harper's Mag. Aug. 365/1   You must..find cover in some coulée or draw.

1885   in A. Fryer Great Loan Land (1887) 12   The drainage of the uplands is collected by..shallow ‘draws’ which effectually drain the surface.

1935   W. Cather Lucy Gayheart xi. 216   In the draws, between the low hills, thickets of wild plum bushes were black against the drifts.

1953   J. Masters Lotus & Wind xx. 253   There was a chance they'd miss the inflow of this draw.

1959   N. Mailer Advts . for Myself

 (1961) 137   The trail rose for a few hundred feet, and then dipped into an empty draw.

Many of these references appear to come from the Midwest. Though the early uses are suggestive, unanswered is precisely how this geological phenomenon came to be called a draw—perhaps verbal shorthand for what they observed—that is, the dip in land drawing the water away.

Perhaps another of your listeners will have provided the answer to that question.

Thank you for asking. I enjoyed your stories. And learning more than I knew before you asked.

Best,

Marcia Prior-Miller