Kerfuffles

I first published this post on 22 August 2005:

The Seminole tribe of Florida has always been proud of its connection with the Chief Osceola mascot of Florida State University and objected when the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) banned the nickname and mascot’s use. I blogged on this recently in “No Little Indian Boys“.

Now, comes reporting from the “New York Times” that Florida State Can Keep Its Seminoles. On September 5th of this year, a student at Florida State University will don traditional warrior dress and war paint and ride bareback on an Appaloosa horse named Renegade. While waving a flaming spear, the student will be acting the part of the Seminole’s Chief Osceola. The NCAA is allowing this to occur at Doak Campbell Stadium only, in Tallahassee, Florida, and nowhere else in the nation when Florida State plays its season opener against Miami.

Yesterday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association agreed with the 3,100-member tribe and the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, which had also endorsed the nickname. The N.C.A.A. removed Florida State from the list of universities banned from using what it called “hostile and abusive” mascots and nicknames during postseason play. “The N.C.A.A. executive committee continues to believe the stereotyping of Native Americans is wrong,” Bernard Franklin, the association’s senior vice president for governance and membership, said in a statement.

That’s the NCAA’s official word. Actually, it probably has much to do with the discovery that the war paint, flaming spear and Appaloosa horse that mascot Chief Osceola sports have no connection whatsoever to the history of the Seminole tribe, therefore it would not be an insult to the Seminoles for non-Indians to use them. Do not try anything authentic, as that would in fact be considered a grievous racial slur.

It certainly would not be because 81 percent of Native Americans in a recent “Sports Illustrated” poll agreed that sports teams should NOT stop using Indian nicknames, mascots, characters, and symbols, according to National Review Online. What do they know? Their opinions do not count when do-gooders are on a righteous mission of saving the Indians from themselves.

The following post was first published by Kerfuffles on August 11, 2005:

I was a-wondering about name changes. How can “Native Americans,” be native Americans, when there was no America nor any Americans when they were natives? “Indians” too was a misnomer applied to them by Columbus and it stuck. And it has really complicated all languages since then, as when we speak of Indians, we must explain which kind of Indian; the Indians that are Hindus, or the Indians who have no connection to the Hindu religion, from which the words “India” and “Indian” originate. Writings from earlier centuries referred to American natives as “Red Indians” for this reason.

Now, have you heard the latest? The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has gone on the warpath, banning the use of Native American team names and mascots in all NCAA-sponsored postseason tournaments. They claim that Native Americans feel it to be shameful and embarrassing to have their ancestors referred to with names like “Indians,” “Braves,” “Warriors” or similar “hostile and abusive” words. Only after the NCAA sent out the press release did the higher-ups notice that their own letterhead of the NCAA’s stationary had printed in big bold letters: “Indianapolis, Indiana.”

Of course they did the only thing that was left to do - they demanded that both the city and state change its names. Since the word “Indian” has been relegated to the dust bin of racial slurs, Indianapolis, Indiana was no longer acceptable. Change it or lose us! Yes indeed, we are moving on out to … Iowa? No. Idaho? No. How about Illinois? Oh forget it, they shouted, but don’t even think about passing along that old Indian peace pipe. To those Native Americans who are none too happy about losing the few legacies left them by their Indian forebears; native words for places, animals and plants; the NCAA responded that they should get over it. Deep down you are no better than the rest of us Americans - WIMPS!

Then came the state of Florida thinking that it knew a thing or two about Indians, as it was way, way back in the 1500s when ole Ponce de Leon happened upon their “Braves,” “Warriors” and other “hostile and abusive” aborigines, and ole Ponce did not live to tell about it. So, comes an already prepared Mr. T.K. Weatherall, the president of Florida State University, with written permission from the bona fide Seminole tribe of Florida that FSU is allowed to use that tribe’s name. Needless to say, that didn’t phase Ms. Charlotte Westerhaus, vice president for “diversity and inclusion” for the NCAA who said get lost. Somewhere, someplace there are “Other Seminole tribes,” she claimed, who “are not supportive,” and prefer to be wimpy couch potatoes rather than portrayed as robust athletes or, even worse, - as a Florida State Mascot (picture).

Just in case you were wondering about that famous Notre Dame mascot, “The Fighting Irish.” It can stay in place and there is logic to the NCAA’s reasoning. “Fighting Irish” is a real slur, therefore it is permitted. “Fighting Irish” was a pejorative used to portray Irish-American immigrants as poor, uneducated Catholics who liked to get drunk and brawl. If the athletes of Notre Dame were puffing themselves up by using mascots such as “Irish Saints,” “The Holy Cardinals” or “Celtic Warriors“, then the NCAA would be gleefully cutting them down to size.

The term “Redskins” was used by early Americans in the 1600s to describe Indian warriors, as they painted their skins red when going to battle. Red was the color of war and the natives had a reputation among the white settlers as being fierce fighters. Read my essay about William Dietz who was a famous Indian football player and became coach of a team that he named in honor of his fellow Indian players, the Boston Redskins. When they played they often wore red paint and native dress. It is he who is pictured above as the proud American Indian that he was. Redskins and Warpaint

Ruffles and Flourishes to “The Red Scare” by Kenneth L. Woodward. Seems that Van at Moonbattery read this same piece and now he has “his Irish up” and is demanding a “pot of gold“.

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. The book claims that the original letter was lost and reproduces a copy from a 1900 publication: Reverend Samuel Smith to Ichabod Smith, January 1698/99.

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.”

Redskins and Warpaint

Redskins of 1634

The Redskin Bard, ~ Simon Pokagon

No Little Indian Boys

Chief Osceola Rides

Tracked at Michelle Malkin, Hiram Hoover and Dust My Broom.
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