Re: "Indians"
Posted by R. Berg on April 03, 2002 In Reply to: Re:
Los Indios, Indians, Savage, Noble Savage, Native American posted by Marian
on April 03, 2002
: : : : : I think it is the political correct
answer, did you notice "genocidal practice". If you look up scalping, you will
see several sites trying to make the argument it was Europe that originated the
practice and the tribes just innocently got caught up into the action. Here is
a good site that dispels that, http://thecowshed.tripod.com/native/cutting.htm
"Finally, the words that are used to describe "scalp" and "scalping" had no set
vocabulary and no universal translation in European languages, but Indians of
different backgrounds and languages had nouns and verbs to refer to the specific
use of the terminology."
: : : : : I can't help but think red=blood and because
it is a negative English word for American Indians, I think it might have something
to do with Indians taking scalps, because it would be a bloody mess, leaving them
with redskinds.
: : : : But did you come to this forum to get information about
the origin of "redskin" or to promote a hypothesis about it? The reference books
that the regulars here rely on say the word came from a supposed reddish hue to
Indians' skin. They say nothing about blood or scalping. The origin of a word
isn't established just by finding that one or another idea is intuitively appealing.
You need historical support, too; and we presume that the compilers of the reference
books have researched the phrases they explain. As an example, look at "the Whole
nine yards" as tossed around in the archives on this site. Many people have "decided"
what the "true" origin of that phrase is--but they have proposed DIFFERENT origins.
:
: RED INDIAN - "An offensive name for Native Americans, but a historical term
applied by the British to North American Indians, apparently because of 'their
copper-colored skin' and to distinguish them semantically from the Indians of
India. From 'Red Indian' came the derogatory word redskin." From "Encyclopedia
of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997).
:
: LOS INDIOS, INDIAN, SAVAGE, NOBLE SAVAGE -- "Since the original inhabitants
of the Western Hemisphere neither called themselves by a single term nor understood
themselves as a collectivity, the idea and image of the Indian must be a White
concept..The term 'Indian' as a general designation for the inhabitants of North
and South America in addition to some Asians stems from the erroneous geography
of Christopher Columbus. Under the impression he had landed among the islands
off Asia, he called the peoples he met 'los Indios.' Although he quite self-consciously
gave new names to islands upon his first voyage, his application of the term 'Indios'
seems to have been almost casual."
: : I skimmed this book and didn't see a
reference to "redskin," the subject of the original inquiry.
: : But Mr. Berkhofter
does include an early description contained in Amerigo Vespucci's "Mundus Novus,"
published around 1504-1505: "They have indeed large square-built bodies, well
formed and proportioned, and in color verging on reddish. This I think has come
to them, because, going around naked, they are colored by the sun."
: : "Seventeenth-century
Frenchmen, Italians, and Englishmen generally employed a variant of the Latin
'silvaticus,' meaning a forest inhabitant or man of the woods, for the Indian
as the earlier spellings of 'saulvage,' 'salvaticho,' and 'salvage' show so well
in each of the respective languages. English usage switched from 'savage' to 'Indian'
as the general term for Native Americans in the seventeenth century, but the French
continued to use 'sauvage' as the preferred word into the nineteenth century.
The original image behind this terminology probably derives from the ancient one
associated with the 'wild man,' or 'wilder Mann' in Germany."
: : ".What Englishmen
called Native Americans and how they understood them after a few decades of settlement
was summarized by Roger Williams in a brief analysis of nomenclature in 'A Key
Into the Language of America; Or, An Help to the Language of the Natives in That
Part of America Called New England' (1643). Under the heading: 'By what names
are they distinguished,' he divided terminology into two sorts: 'First, those
of the English giving: as Natives, Salvages, Indians, Wild-men, (so the Dutch
call them 'Wilden'), Abergeny Men, Pagans, Barbarians, Heathen. Second, their
Names, which they give themselves.'"
: : From "The Idea of the Indian: Invention
and Perpetuation," from "The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian
from Columbus to the Present" by Robert F. Berkhofer Jr. (First Vintage Books
Edition, 1979; originally published by Alfred A. Knoft Inc., 1978).
: : "As
information about the inhabitants of the New World became better known in the
Old, Native Americans entered the literary and imaginative works of European writers,
particularly the French. In this way the American Indian became part of the 'bon
sauvage' or Noble Savage tradition so long an accompaniment of the Golden Age
or paradisaical mythology of Western civilization.Only after French and English
explorations and settlement proceeded in the seventeenth century, however, could
the European imagination be stimulated by accounts other than Spanish in origin,
and the noble Huron and Iroquois and other tribesmen north of Mexico join their
literary colleagues, the wise princes of the Inca and Aztec realms and the good
Indians of Brazil and the Antilles."
: : From "European Primitivism, the Noble
Savage, and the American Indian," also a chapter in "The White Man's Indian: Images
of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present."
: : REDSKIN -- "redskin,
1699; red man, 1725; red devil, 1834." From "I Hear America Talking" by Stuart
Berg Flexner (Von Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, 1976).
: : RED MEN - "The
Improved Order of Red Men was originally organized by those who admired Indian
character and who adopted as their 'patron' Chief Tammany. It is now an organization
that does charitable and benevolent acts. The first idea was started in Philadelphia
around 1772 when a society met called 'The Sons of Tammany.' They met at the home
of Mr. James Byran." This reference does not include an entry for "redskin." From
the "Dictionary of the American Indian: An A-to-Z Guide to Indian History, Legend
and Lore" by John Stoutenburgh Jr. (Wing Books, Avenel, New Jersey, 1960)
:
: NATIVE AMERICAN -- "adj, n (1956) (a member) of the indigenous peoples of North
America. A term not in wide use until the 1970s, when the political incorrectness
of referring to such people as 'Indians' began to be more keenly felt. Before
long, it too succumbed, the offending component being 'native.' 1956 Aldous Huxley:
Thank you for your most interesting letter about the Native American churchmen."
From "20th Century Words: The Story of New Words in English Over the Last 100
Years" by John Ayto (Oxford University Press, New York, 1999)
: A number of
years ago my husband and kids and I visited Salt Lake City. A young white woman
smilingly took our little tour group through some hallowed grounds belonging to
the Church of Latter-Day Saints while she related key background information about
the Mormon faith. Her story about Jesus appearing after his death to Indians in
South America caught my husband's attention. "Which tribe?" he asked her. She
stopped smiling and looked puzzled for a moment, then brightened. "I think all
of them," she said.
George Carlin is a comedian, not a philologist, and I haven't
checked his facts, but he does have a great sensitivity to language, and this
is what he says about "Indian":
"There's nothing wrong with the word Indian.
First of all, it's important to know that the word Indian does not derive from
Columbus mistakenly believing he had reached 'India.' India was not even called
by that name in 1492; it was known as Hindustan. More likely, the word 'Indian'
comes from Columbus's description of the people he found here. He was an Italian,
and did not speak or write very good Spanish, so in his written accounts he called
the Indians, 'Una gente in Dios.' A people in God. In God. In Dios. Indians."
[George Carlin, "Brain Dropppings," Hyperion Press, 1997, p. 165]
- Re:
"Indians" ESC 04/03/02 (3)
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