Arapaho woman (Hisei), late 19th Century.
So, what are they?
Takluit woman, 1910. The coins are Chinese.
First, a precautionary note. Even setting the word squaw aside, some of these could legitimately be regarded as otherwise offensive. I.e., if you edit "squaw" out and substitute for Indian Woman, or Native American Woman, some would still be offensive.
Hopi woman, 1900.
Okay, according to the Federal Government, this is the list in Wyoming.
I'll note right away that I know this list to be inaccurate at least in so far as what things are apparently actually called, as the clearly offensive "Squaw Teat" actually also applies to a peak, or high hill, in Natrona County.
Mohave woman, 1903.
And the last item, in case anyone wonders, is listed there as it was renamed recently from a name that formerly included the word squaw in it.
And we'd also note that one is a historical place name of a now abandoned settlement. You probably can't, or at least shouldn't, do something in regard to that.
So let's next start first with the ultimate question Is it offensive?
Native American woman in Oklahoma, 1939.
Let's take a look at an article recently published in Indian Country Today on that question, here's what they partially had to say on that. For the full article, you should go to Indian Country Today.
Some historical connections
According to Dr. Marge Bruchac, an Abenaki historical consultant, Squaw means the totality of being female and the Algonquin version of the word “esqua,” “squa” “skwa” does not translate to a woman’s female anatomy.
Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines the term as “often offensive: an American Indian woman” and “usually disparaging: woman, wife.”
The Urban Dictionary paints a different picture. It says the word squaw “Does not mean vagina, or any other body part for that matter. The word comes from the Massachusett (no S) Algonquian tribe and means: female, young woman. The word squaw is not related to the Mohawk word ‘ojiskwa’: which does mean vagina. There is absolutely no derogatory meaning in the word ‘squaw.’ ‘Squaw’ has been a familiar word in American literature and language since the 16th century and has been generally understood to mean an Indian woman, or wife.” It is worth noting the Urban Dictionary is not an authoritative Native source.
In her article “Reclaiming the word ‘Squaw’ in the Name of the Ancestors,” Dr. Bruchac wrote the following excerpt about the meaning of squaw.
“The word has been interpreted by modern activists as a slanderous assault against Native American women. But traditional Algonkian speakers, in both Indian and English, still say words like ‘nidobaskwa’=a female friend, ‘manigebeskwa’=woman of the woods, or ‘Squaw Sachem’=female chief. When Abenaki people sing the Birth Song, they address ‘nuncksquassis’=‘little woman baby’.”
“I understand the concern of Indian women who feel insulted by this word, but I respectfully suggest that we reclaim our language rather than let it be taken over,” wrote Bruchac.
The first recorded version of squaw was found in a book called Mourt’s Relation: A Journey of the Pilgrims at Plymouth written in 1622. The term was not used in a derogatory fashion but spoke of the “squa sachim or Massachusets Queen” in the September 20, 1621 journal entry.
Though the earliest historical references support a non-offensive slant on the meaning of squaw and support Bruchac’s claims, there are also several literary and historical instances of squaw being used in a derogatory or sexually connotative way.
According to some proponents on the inflammatory side of the words meaning, squaw could just as easily have come from the Mohawk word ojiskwa’ which translates politely to vagina.
In the 1892 book An Algonquin Maiden by Canadian writer Pauline Johnson, whose father was a Mohawk Chief, the word squaw indicates a sexual meaning.
“Poor little Wanda! not only is she non-descript and ill-starred, but as usual the authors take away her love, her life, and last and most terrible of all, reputation; for they permit a crowd of men-friends of the hero to call her a ‘squaw’ and neither hero nor authors deny that she is a squaw. It is almost too sad when so much prejudice exists against the Indians, that any one should write up an Indian heroine with such glaring accusations against her virtue…”
So, what can we say?
Well, not knowing for sure, as I'm certainly not a linguist with a knowledge of any of these languages, and it's clear that linguist don't agree themselves, I suspect that Dr. Burchac is correct. The origin is likely from a native language and unlikely to have had an offensive origin.
But that doesn't really fully answer the question, and it's a really touchy one, which I'd bet Dr. Burchac will acknowledge.
At its bare root, the word means an Indian, or perhaps more accurately now, a Native American, woman, the same way that "papoose" has been used in the past to describe a Native American baby, and "brave" has inaccurately been used to describe all Native American men (although also the much more offensive "buck" also shows up in that use). Simply left at that, it's probably no more offensive than the word "Frau" and "Fräulein" are to describe German women, or Madam and Mademoiselle, or Señora and Señorita are in French and Spanish respectively.
Two Charger Woman, a Brule Sioux, 1907.
Indeed, in a certain context, maybe even less so, as it at least is an acknowledgement to culture. And that sort of seems how the original use was. The 1622 use is not only amazingly early, it was an attempt at being descriptive and providing an honorific, the "Massachusetts Queen". In that context, the early use of the work seems to have conveyed gender and ethnicity at the same time.
Woman Of Many Deeds, the granddaughter of Red Cloud, 1907. Note the crucifix, she was Catholic, as the Red Could family was.
It's later uses that become the problem. And that takes us quite a ways back in and of itself.
European colonization of the New World can really be viewed as colonization by three different ethnic groups for the most part, two Catholic and one Protestant.* While early on the original European view seems to have been largely similar among all three groups, by the mid 1600s this was changing. It would not be fair, we'd note, to really lump this into two groups, as it wouldn't be fair to compare the Spanish with the French. And from the lens of 2021 looking at things that occurred in 1621 is fraught with dangers inherent in misconceptions and filtration through current views.
Dusty Dress, 1910.
Very generally, however, English colonists had a fascination with Native Americans when they first landed in North America, and were pretty open to the native cultures. French colonization started at just about the same time as the English, for all practical purposes, and the French had a highly open view of the Native populations. The Spanish started almost 3/4s of a century earlier, and their early interactions are considerably more complicated. All three populations were not averse to mixing with Native populations at first, with the French and Spanish being very open to it, particularly in the case of the French whose Catholic faith had instructed them that the Natives were just as much children of God as they were. This was also true of the Spanish, but the Spanish had met with considerably more armed resistance even by the 17th Century than either the English or the French had.
Things really began to fall apart, however, for the English with King Philips War, which broke out in 1675 and ran through 1678. Hard and brutally fought, the English began to pretty quickly modify their view of Native Americans in general. While, from our prospective, the war was a cleverly fought and logical Native reaction to an invasion, from the English prospective of the period it was a bitter betrayal by a heathenous people.
From that point on the English, and soon we might say the American, view of Native Americans was much different than the French or the Spanish one. The French had their run-ins with native bands, but having colonized New France to a much smaller degree, they also tended to engage the Natives in commerce really quickly and their Catholicism caused them to regard the Natives in their region as souls to be brought into the Church, with intermarriage soon to be common. The Spanish largely took the same view, although in their case they also ran into some large, and well organized, bands that put up fierce resistance to their presence, giving them, as previously noted, a more nuanced view. Nonetheless, the view of Spanish colonists is perhaps best reflected in that the populations of much of South and Central America today are from mixed Spanish and Native heritage. In what became Canada it gave rise ultimately to the Métis, a recognized "native", but in fact mixed heritage, group of people with their own unique history.
In the Thirteen Colonies it gave rise to pretty bitter struggles which merged into bitter American ones with native bands once the Crown was ejected from what became the United States. The intent here isn't to give a legal or military history of the events, but to only note it in the context of what's being discussed.
Alice Pat-E-Wa, 1900.
Humans being human, the ethnic struggle did not prove to be a bar to intermixing. This occurred simply naturally, and violently. And this resulted in an interesting and opposing set of views.
"The Trapper's Bride" by Alfred Jacob Miller. Miller painted versions of this scense at least three times, probably by request.
On the frontier, which was male dominated, frontiersmen fairly routinely began to take Native American wives. For those of French origin this was highly common, but it was quite common for those of English heritage, or "American" heritage as well. At the same time, however, Native Americans were a looked down upon minority class who were in the way of what was regarded as progress, even though they were simultaneously celebrated as "noble savages". Reconciling these views is difficult to do, but they were held be Americans simultaneously.
Annie Kash-Kash, 1899.
What we can say, however, is that these relationships were likely as varied as any other, but we shouldn't presume by any means that they were forced. In some instances, they likely were, or were relationships darned near akin to slavery. An earlier article on Sacajawea we published here discussed a circumstance that certainly raises such questions. At the same time, however. you can find such as Wyoming frontiersman John Robinson who married Native women twice and genuinely. Famed scout Kit Carson had more than one Native bride. And an extended view may be given of a Swiss artists, whose name I have forgotten, who went West to sketch Plains Indians and returned to Switzerland with a Native bride, an illustration of whom shows upon the book Man Made Mobile.
An historically important example is given in the example of William Bent and Owl Woman, the latter of whom was a Cheyenne. Bent, who together with his brother Charles, were very successful traders in Colorado and New Mexico ultimately ended up with three Cheyenne wives, as he followed a Cheyenne custom and married Owl Woman's two younger sisters. Charles became Governor of New Mexico. William Bent and Owl Woman had a large, and historically significant family, although she died when some of their children were still quite young and her sister Island became their surrogate mother. His two Cheyenne wives ultimately abandoned him, and then he married a "mixed" Indian/European woman of age 20, when he was 60, dying the following year.
George Bent and his wife Magpie. Bent served as an underaged cavalryman in the Confederate Army before he was captured and paroled. Upon his return to Colorado his father sent him to live with his aunt with the Cheyenne and he was at Sand Creek when it was attacked by Colorado militia. Ironically, a brother of his was serving with the militia as a scout. Bent was married three times, with all of his wives being Native Americans.
All of this is noted as William Bent's marriage into a Cheyenne family worked enormously to his advantage. At the same time, his children lived in both worlds, taking part in the Plains struggle largely on the Cheyenne side. George Bent contributed to one of the great accounts of the period. William Bent's marriage into a Native family was not held against him.
Native woman from Pacific Northwest.
These matches show how complicated such things can become in some ways, and how simple in others. They were mostly men taking Native women as brides, but there are few examples at least that are the other way around. Nonetheless, at the same time, European Americans could dismiss Native brides pretty condescendingly as well as their husbands, who ended up with the pejorative "Squaw Men".
This, then is what gives rise to the problem. By the late 19th Century if not considerably earlier, the use of the word "squaw" could mean simply a woman of Native ethnicity, or it could be a slam on the woman herself and her entire ethnicity. And of course, for most Native women the word was not one from their own languages and therefore only had the meanings that others from the outside attributed to it.
Cheyenne woman, 1910.
That legacy has continued on, although the word simply isn't used now, at least not without intending to convey a shocking insult.
Be that as it may, that leaves us with the over 40 place names that bear that name in Wyoming and numerous others in other states. What did those people mean? At the time they named them, they may have simply been so acclimated to the term that they meant nothing in particular. "Squaw Creek", for example, displays an obvious intent to name a creek after an Indian woman or women, but why? Most of the others are the same way. The odd exception may be the ones named after breasts, but then the Grand Tetons are as well, and it isn't really clear whether we should regard the nameless French trapper who termed them that as of a higher mind, for naming the mountains after breasts in general, rather than after those for women who happened to be around, or whether we ought to simply dismiss all such names as of an excessively prurient nature, which would probably be more accurate, really.
Cayuse woman, 1910.
So what to do?
Well, whatever is done, I hope they don't scrub the women out of the names. Squaw Creeks, for example, were named after Native women for some reason. That ought to be preserved.
And beyond that, there's a terrible tendency to treat these matters, which are cosmetic, as if they really pay attention to deeper problems that face Native Americans today. Far too often those who seek to "help" Native Americans imagine them as a people of the past, when in fact they're very much a people of the present. Ignoring that fact does no good for them at all.
Footnotes:
*This obviously omits the Russians, who were the original colonizers of Alaska and who had a settlement as far south as California, and it unfairly lumps the English and Scottish together, even though they are seperate people and that reflected itself in early immigration to North America.
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