Hee maketh some folkes whyte, some blacke, some read, and some Tawny; and yet is hee but one selfesame Sunne. ~~”De la Vérité de la Religion Chréstienne”, Philippe de Mornay, 1587.
Today in The Washington Post appears “A Linguist’s Alternative History of ‘Redskin’” with the byline “Term Did Not Begin as Insult, Smithsonian Scholar Says“. I had already written that when I began covering this interesting bit of linguistic history last April regarding demands that the Washington Redskins change the name of the football team.
Smithsonian Institution senior linguist Ives Goddard spent seven months researching its history and concluded that “redskin” was first used by Native Americans in the 18th century to distinguish themselves from the white “other” encroaching on their lands and culture.
When it first appeared as an English expression in the early 1800s, “it came in the most respectful context and at the highest level,” Goddard said in an interview. “These are white people and Indians talking together, with the white people trying to ingratiate themselves.”
It was not until July 22, 1815, that “red skin” first appeared in print, he found — in a news story in the Missouri Gazette on talks between Midwestern Indian tribes and envoys sent by President James Madison to negotiate treaties after the War of 1812.
The earliest mention I have found of the natives’ “red skin” was from Father Andrew White’s Journal, 1634, when Maryland was first settled:
“The natives are of tall and comely stature, of a skin by nature somewhat tawny, which they make more hideous by daubing, for the most part, with red paint mixed with oil, to keep away the mosquitoes …“.
Samuel Smith of Connecticut was sixty-one when he wrote a letter in 1699, describing his family’s early days when they arrived from England to the new world. His father, the Reverend Henry Smith, died in 1648, when Samuel was but a boy. The son described his father thusly: “I do well remember ye Face & Figure of my Honoured Father. He was 5 foote, 10 inches talle & spare of builde, tho not leane. He was as Active as ye Red Skin Men & sinewy. His delight was in sportes of strengthe …” The 1699 letter continued:
Ye firste Meeting House was solid mayde to withstande ye wicked onsaults of ye Red Skins. Its Foundations was laide in ye feare of ye Lord, but its Walls was truly laide in ye feare of ye Indians for many & grate was ye Terrors of em. I do minde me yt alle ye able-bodyed Men did work thereat & ye old and feeble did watch in turns to espie if any Salvages was in hidinge neare & every Man keept his Musket nighe to his hande. I do not myself remember any of ye Attacks mayde by large bodeys of Indians whilst we did remayne in Weathersfield, but did oftimes hear of em. Several Families wch did live back a ways from ye River was either Murderdt or Captivated in my Boyhood & we all did live in constant feare of ye like. My father ever declardt there would not be so much to feare iff ye Red-Skins was treated with such mixture of Justice & Authority as they cld understand, but iff he was living now he must see that wee can do naught but fight em & that right heavily. After ye Red Skins ye grate Terror of our lives at Weathersfield & for many yeares after we had moved to Hadley to live was ye Wolves.
Mr. Ives Goddard, the Smithsonian’s linguist, has now declared that Samuel Smith’s letter was a work of fiction, so I do not know what to make of that recent discovery, and I would certainly want to see more evidence of that declaration. He claims that he found a draft written by Helen Everton Smith, a descendant, in her own handwriting: “My father ever declared there would not be so much to fear if the Indians were treated with such mixture of Justice and authority as they could comprehend …“. This differs from what Samuel Smith was purported to have written quoted above. Mr. Goddard claims Samuel Smith’s writings to be fake because “The language was Hollywood. . . . It didn’t look like the way people really wrote.” I am mystified, to say the least, as Helen Everton Smith, seems to have been an author of colonial history for children during the 1900s period. As a writer of that era, there certainly would have been drafts in her own handwriting.
The 1698/1699 letter, known as “Reverend Samuel Smith to Ichabod Smith, January 1698/99” is published in The Columbia Documentary History of Race and Ethnicity in America
Mr. Goddard finds that the earliest usages of “redskin” are from statements made in 1769, by Indian tribal chiefs negotiating with the British.
“I shall be pleased to have you come to speak to me yourself,” said one statement attributed to a chief named Mosquito. “And if any redskins do you harm, I shall be able to look out for you even at the peril of my life.”
The Redskin Bard, ~ Simon Pokagon
Tracked at Michelle Malkin, Hiram Hoover and Dust My Broom.
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