testimony to fairfax county public schools with materials september 27 2007

Changes to school dress code discrimination Fairfax County School Board Meeting September 27th, 2007 1

Mary Phillips, (Omaha/Laguna Pueblo) Native American Citizen Testimony Fairfax County School Board Regular Meeting Fairfax County School Board

TO ENFORCE CHAPTER 1, SECTION D. DRESS CODE AND SUBSECTION 2 OF SECTION E. RIGHT OF EXPRESSION AND LIMITATIONS OF REGULATION 2601.21P FAIRFAX COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS STUDENT RESPONSIBILITIES AND RIGHTS.

------- Thursday, Sep. 27th Falls Church, VA Aho Kage! Na-we-blah-ha. Good evening Fairfax County School Board members. My name is Mary Phillips and I am from the Omaha Tribal Nation and of the Laguna Pueblo tribe. On behalf of my tribal colleague and friend, Jeanne and James Eagle-bull Oxendine, thank you for this opportunity to speak with you this evening. I am here to address the school board: TO ENFORCE CHAPTER 1, SECTION D. DRESS CODE; SECTION E. RIGHT OF EXPRESSION SUBSECTION 2; AND CHAPTER 2, SECTION A, C, AND D OF SUBSECTION 2 DISRUPTIVE OR INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR OF THE LIMITATIONS OF REGULATION 2601.21P FAIRFAX COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS STUDENT RESPONSIBILITIES AND RIGHTS. Testimony was first offered to the board in response to a request to revise the school dress code in order to ban Native American imagery and logos. This request was denied and given little to no consideration based on a response made by Superintendent Jack Dale stating, “At this time, there is not an interest in changing our dress code.” And is further explained that the rationale was based on the comment that, “Our [Fairfax County school system] current code reflects the most recent court decisions and we believe it also reflects our community's expectations.” (See E-mail Wednesday, June 13, 2007 8:05 PM). At this time it behooves the School Board to reconsider their rationale in response to the request to ban Native American imagery and logos by changing the dress code. Instead of not addressing the intended social and welfare relief that a minimal revision to the school dress code would create for a minority population of the Fairfax County school system, the Fairfax County school board could instead extend its Student Rights and Responsibilities (SR&R) to ensure all students were given equal opportunity in its regulations. We, as Native American citizens, hereby request that the SR& R sections previously described be enforced to ELIMINATE OPPRESSION and OPPRESSIVE BEHAVIOR expressed by students, teachers and parents when wearing Washington “Redskins” paraphernalia.

Changes to school dress code discrimination Fairfax County School Board Meeting September 27th, 2007

Specifically, in the SR& R it states: Chapter 1 Section D: Dress Code Any clothing that interferes with or disrupts the educational environment is unacceptable. Clothing with LANGUAGE or images that are vulgar, DISCRIMINATORY, or obscene or clothing that promotes illegal or violent conduct, such as the unlawful use of weapons, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, or drug paraphernalia, or clothing that contains threats such as gang symbols is prohibited. Section E. Right of Expression and Limitations Students may exercise the right to freedom of expression through speech, assembly, petition, and other lawful means and have the right to advocate change of any law, policy, or regulation. THE EXERCISE OF THIS RIGHT MAY NOT INTERFERE WITH THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS, nor may oral or written student opinions or visual expression be used to present material that falls into any of the following categories:

CITED 2. Material that is LIBELOUS OR SLANDEROUS--statements that are inaccurate or false statements that injure the person by damaging his or her reputation; CAUSE PERSONAL HUMILIATION, MENTAL ANGUISH, and suffering; or cause other injuries. We, Native American citizens, find that allowing schools in your county to continue to portray Native Americans as mascots causes undue personal humiliation and mental anguish on students with Native American ancestry. Due to time limitations, we are not able to address in this meeting the libelous or slanderous effect the term “REDSKINS” has on students both as oppressors and the oppressed, but have instead provided the board with information on the term. For those of you who like myself didn’t get the opportunity to learn about the United States’ attempts to cause genocide of the American Indian peoples and Indigenous peoples alike in primary and secondary school, the first of two pieces is a short explanation as described by a young Blackfoot women who has learned of the horrific origins of the term “REDSKIN”. This is not learned through mainstream literature but through the oral history of her tribe and relatives. In many cases this is the true testimony on facts rather than distorted or contrived writings of “discoverers” with no knowledge of cultural acumen. The second piece is a researched academic review of the term which provides empirical historic information on the definition and its anthropological uses. To note other more recent findings on the term - The United States Commission on Civil Rights states: Friday, April 13, 2001 The US Commission on Civil Rights condemns the use of American Indians as mascots, logos, and nicknames at schools and universities…the Commission believes that the use of Native American images and nicknames in schools is insensitive and should be avoided. . . " The Commission also states that, "Schools have a responsibility to educate their students; they should not use their influence to perpetuate misrepresentations of any culture or people." The National Coalition on Racism and Sports and the Media states: This is a human rights issue, we are being denied the most basic respect. As long as our people are perceived as cartoon characters or static beings locked in the past, our socio-economic problems will


never be seriously addressed. Also, this issue of imagery has a direct correlation with violence against Indian people and the high suicide rate of our youth." Wayne Crue, 12 years old (Shoshone-Bannock ) states: “Native mascots and symbols are all that the kids at school know about my people, and they make fun of me for following traditional ways. These fake images make me feel sick inside. They make fun of who I am. They imitate and mock our sacred feathers, dance and music. We honor our leaders, not use them as entertainment." Testimony to a school board in the state of Kansas was provided to ban a Native American image that was derogatory describes: “My feeling that the offensive mascot is an indicator of the widespread teaching of stereotypes of Indian Culture and the exploitative dominant culture historical perspectives in the Wichita and Kansas Public Schools. Most of our members have much less confidence in the ability of the local Unified School District 259 to effectively engage the complexities of training staff and adjusting their curriculum to teach a more honest perspective on the past 500 years of contact on this continent (at least in our lifetimes) so we have opted for just pressing the issue….That is to say, "Can you teach an old dog new tricks?" or "It's taken seven generations just to get this far…when and where are public educators going to make the time and place to confront the real problems? Most likely not until we who care make our objections known. There has been much research on the effects of negative Native American imagery in the public and most importantly on Native American youth. For statistical purpose Native American youth are three times more likely to commit suicide before the age of 21 than the US population. There are too many other related statistics on the Post Traumatic Stress caused by racial slurs and names to cite here. All research agree there needs to be support by unbiased, non-racist communities and entities such as the school board who will assist in stopping the bigotry to continue. The Jena 6 are in the minds of the public and is a good example of how school board apathy did not prevent loss of student morale, and now has damaged the lives of 6. We, Native American citizens, realize the scope of making this a social change opportunity for school board members and see more than “Redskins” supporting our request. “Blackskins”, “Yellowskins” and “Greenskins” are also a target for the same continued racist ignorance. In closing we, Native American citizens, challenge the school board to: 1. Ban the term “REDSKIN” to appear on clothes worn during school; 2. Initiate consideration of additional dress code guidelines; 3. Appoint a task force on discrimination; 4. Or adopt "Racism Free Zones". We feel if any of these action steps are taken seriously or are enforced along with the previous sections of the SR&R, less tolerance for racism and derogatory slurs will be directed at Native American students of the Fairfax County school system. If you can enforce the Pledge of Allegiance with liberty and justice for all, then the dress code should follow the same mandate.

Aho, Thank you, Mary Phillips Native American Citizen

MASCOTS - Redskins origin of the term The Term Redskin

Dear Editor; It was brought to my attention that some were asking if the term "redskin" was really offensive to Indians and that they would like to hear from us on this subject. Well, here you are...I am Blackfoot, Cherokee and Choctaw...and yes, the term is extremely offensive to me. Let me explain why. Back not so long ago, when there was a bounty on the heads of the Indian people...the trappers would bring in Indian scalps along with the other skins that they had managed to trap or shoot. These scalps brought varying prices as did the skins of the animals. The trappers would tell the trading post owner or whoever it was that he was dealing with, that he had 2 bearskins, a couple of beaver skins...and a few scalps. Well, the term "scalp" offended the good Christian women of the community and they asked that another term be found to describe these things. So, the trappers and hunters began using the term "redskin"...they would tell the owner that they had bearskin, deer skins....and "redskins." The term came from the bloody mess that one saw when looking at the scalp...thus the term "red"...skin because it was the "skin" of an "animal" just like the others that they had...so, it became "redskins". So, you see when we see or hear that term...we don't see a football team...we don't see a game being played...we don't see any "honor"...we see the bloody pieces of scalps that were hacked off of our men, women and even our children...we hear the screams as our people were killed...and "skinned" just like animals. So, yes, Mr./Ms. Editor...you can safely say that the term is considered extremely offensive.

In Struggle, Tina Holder Mesa, Az.


Redskin ‘Indian, Native American’ hasbeen a contentious word in recentyears. In 1999 the United States Trade-mark Trial and Appeal Board orderedthe cancellation of the trademarks ofthe Washington Redskins footballteam after finding that the use of theword redskin was “scandalous” and“may … disparage” Native Americansor “bring them into contempt, or disre-pute.” Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ofthe United States District Court for theDistrict of Columbia reversed this de-cision on 30 September 2003, grant-ing summary judgment for Pro-Foot-ball, Inc., against Cheyenne-CreekIndian activist Suzan Shown Harjoand others. The court found that “the

TTAB’s finding of disparagement isnot supported by substantial evi-dence” and that “the doctrine of lach-es precludes consideration of thecase.”1 One need not accept Harjo’sunfounded claim that the word redskin“had its origins in the practice of pre-senting bloody red skins and scalpsas proof of Indian kill for bounty pay-ments”2 to accept that many find theword objectionable in current use. Butthe actual origin of the word is entire-ly benign and reflects more positiveaspects of relations between Indiansand whites. It emerged at a specifictime in history among a small group ofmen linked by joint activities that pro-vided the context that brought it forth.Before its documented history can betraced, however, the false historygiven for it in standard referencebooks must be expunged.

Samuel Smith’s Letter

Dictionaries give the first occurrencesof the expression redskin as being ina letter of reminiscences written bySamuel Smith of Hadley, Massachu-setts, on 1 January 1699 (Mathews1951: 1368; OED). This has “ye RedSkin Men” in one place and threeoccurrences of “ye Red Skins.” Two ofthese are in the following passage,where Smith writes of his father that

“he did helpe to rear bothe our owneHouse & ye Firste Meetinge Houseof Weathersfield, … Ye firste Meet-inge House was solid mayde to with-stande ye wicked onsaults of ye RedSkins. Its Foundations was laide in yefeare of ye Lord, but its Walls wastruly laide in ye feare of ye Indians,for many & grate was ye Terrors ofem. … I do not myself remember anyof ye Attacks mayde by large bodeysof Indians whilst we did remayne inWeathersfield, but did ofttimes hearof em. Several Families wch did liveback a ways from ye River was eitherMurderdt or Captivated in my Boy-hood & we all did live in constantfeare of ye like. My Father ever de-clardt there would not be so muchto feare iff ye Red Skins was treatedwith suche mixture of Justice & Au-thority as they cld understand, but iffhe was living now he must see thatwee can do naught but fight em & thatright heavily” (Smith 1900: 49–50).There are obvious problems with

this source, however. For one thing,the original letter has never beenfound. It is quoted from a book pub-lished in 1900 with the title ColonialDays & Ways as Gathered FromFamily Papers (Smith 1900).3 The

IVES GODDARD “I AM A RED-SKIN”:The Adoption of a Native American Expression (1769–1826)

Ives Goddard is Senior Linguist in theDepartment of Anthropology, National Mu-seum of Natural History, Smithsonian In-stitution. His research has focused on theAlgonquian languages, especially Munsee,Unami, Massachusett, and Meskwaki. Since1990 he has been conducting fieldworkamong the Meskwaki in Tama County, IA, aspart of a project to edit and translate thenative-written Meskwaki manuscripts col-lected for the Bureau of American Ethnol-ogy by Truman Michelson in 1911 and theyears following. He is the editor of Lan-guages, vol. 17 of the Handbook of NorthAmerican Indians (1996), and the compilerof the wall map Native Languages andLanguage Families of North America (1999).Author’s address: Smithsonian Institution,MRC 100, P.O. Box 37012, Washington,DC 20013-7012. U.S.A.E-mail: [email protected] author is indebted for various assi-stance to James Axtell, Richard W. Bailey,Randy Blomquist, Steve Brisson, LauraBuszard-Welcher, Elizabeth Chenault, Con-stantin Chmielnicky, David Costa, Ray-mond J. DeMallie, Michael Dickey, Mag-gie Dittemore, Nancy Flood, Wayne Frank-lin, Dee Grimsrud, Geoffrey A. Kimball,John E. Koontz, John Ludwickson, Mi-chael McCafferty, Jack B. Martin, Mari-anne Mithun, Dennis Northcott, Jan Ober-la, Douglas R. Parks, Andrew Pierce,Robert L. Rankin, Jim Rementer, StephenRhind-Tutt, Donald A. Ringe, David S.Rood, Jurga Saltanaviciute, Elizabeth G.Shapiro, Jean Daniel Stanley, Lucy Thom-ason, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, JohnVanDereedt, Robert Vézina, Herman J.Viola, and Neal Woodman.

NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES 19:2 2005 1

1 Pro-Football, Inc., Plaintiff, v. SuzanShown Harjo, 284 F. Supp. 2d 96 (2003),pp. 4, 83 (= United States District Courtfor the District of Columbia, Memoran-dum Opinion (September 30, 2003),Civil Action No. 99-1385 (CKK)). Postedat www.dcd.courts.gov/99-1385a.pdf.

2 “Some facts on squaw and similarwords,” posted by Suzan Harjo (15August 2003) at poynteronline.orgunder “Article Feedback.” Harjo madethe same assertions in an interview onthe Oprah Winfrey Show in 1992; theprogram, called Racism in 1992: NativeAmericans, was no. 8 in a series onracism. (I am grateful to Jim Rementerfor a transcription of her remarks, madefrom a video.) Two years later aWashington Post reporter, after inter-viewing Harjo, led a lengthy article withthis claim, stating that it was true“according to the custodians of NativeAmerican history” (“Bury My Heart atRFK,” Washington Post, 6 November1994, pp. F1, F4–F5). The claim alsoappears in Harjo’s published account ofthe trademark case (Harjo 2001: 190); itwas not, however, part of the submis-sion to the trademark board, and nosupporting evidence for it has everbeen cited. For the aboriginal roots ofscalping and other trophy taking, therole of scalp bounties in promoting thepractice, and the rise of the modernmyth that Europeans introduced it, seeAxtell and Sturtevant (1980).

3 The copyright suggests that one or morechapters may have originally appearedin the New York Evening Post. It wasreprinted in 1901. An early manuscriptoutline has the title “Colonial Family Lifefrom Family Papers” with an earlier “Co-lonial Home Life Pictures” crossed out.(Ledger of submitted articles andaccounts p. 128, unnumbered box,Helen Evertson Smith papers, New-YorkHistorical Society.)

2 EUROPEAN REVIEW OF

author of this, Helen Evertson Smith,describes the letter as known from acopy made by Samuel Smith’s great-great-granddaughter Juliana Smith ina diary she kept from 1779–1781 thatwas among a trove of documents pre-served in the ancestral family house inSharon, Connecticut. The stone Geor-gian house that the Smith family called“Weatherstone” is real, but accordingto Elizabeth G. Shapiro, the Director ofthe Sharon Historical Society, none ofthe documents referred to in HelenEvertson Smith’s book, including Juli-ana Smith’s diary, have ever beenlocated (pers. com., 6 October 2004;10 November 2004; 28 January 2005).

There is, however, a document thatsheds light on the published letteramong Helen Evertson Smith’s papersin the New-York Historical Society. Inthis collection there are two note-books labeled “Colonial” and “Colo-nial and other Material,” which containexcerpts from various sources. And inone of these is the following passagein Helen Evertson Smith’s hand:4

“Samuel Smith (first) in a letter writ-ten soon after the great Indianattack upon Hadley, Mass., in 1676,at which time he was then living,says that am’g his first recollectionswere “[[of]] the Indian Alarms inWethersfield, Ct., where the founda-tions of my father’s meeting housewere laid in the fear of the Lord, &its walls were reared in the terror ofthe Indians. I do not remember anyattacks made by large parties there,but several families, which lived backa ways from the River were eithermurdered or captivated during myboyhood, and we all lived in constantfear of the like. My father ever de-clared there would not be so much tofear if the Indians were treated withsuch [[a]] mixture of [[firmness &]][[j]]Justice & Authority as they couldcomprehend, but if he was living nowhe must think that we can do naught,but fight them & that right heavily.”Copied by Julian Smith in their fam-ily news paper the “Clio” in 1781.5

It is evident that this passage alleged-ly from a Samuel Smith letter of 1676is an earlier version of the section ofhis purported letter of 1699 that isquoted in extenso above. For exam-ple, there are two places in the hand-written passage where Helen Evert-son Smith changed wording that isinside her quotation marks to thewording that appears in her book.What was first written as

his first recollections were “ofwas changed to

am(on)g his first recollections were“the

in the book, and “firmness & justice” be-came “Justice & Authority”. The note-book entry appears to be a sort of dressrehearsal, an earlier attempt at fabri-cating a letter from the Colonial Period,complete with a somewhat different fam-ily source. And most significantly in thepresent context, what is in the publishedletter as “iff ye Red Skins was treated”is in Helen Evertson Smith’s notebookas “if the Indians were treated.”6

The excerpt in Helen Evertson Smith’snotebook contains no non-standardspellings and only mild attempts atarchaic vocabulary and diction, butthe published letter has been relent-lessly antiqued. Many words are print-ed with the addition of a word-finalsilent -e, but the frequency and distri-bution of this feature are inconsistentwith late seventeenth-century usage.7In the book, “ye” has been substitutedeverywhere the notebook has the, andthe non-emphatic auxiliary verb did isused with unidiomatic frequency, asin the two places where “did live” hasreplaced lived.8 The words Helen Ev-ertson Smith had entered in her note-book as murdered and declared shehad her publisher print as “murderdt”and “declardt,” spellings that, like herword “onsaults” (for onslaughts), ap-pear to be unknown outside her book.

There are other anachronistic orunidiomatic usages in the publishedSmith letter outside the section that

was rewritten from what is in the note-book. For example, there is a refer-ence to “Catamounts,” a word not oth-erwise known to have been applied tothe North American mountain lion be-fore 1794, though later used by bothRalph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wen-dell Holmes (OED). The letter has “tillthey got Married,” but the expressionto get married was not used in the sev-enteenth century, and get with anypassive participle is rare before thenineteenth century (OED: get, v., 34b).9The expanded description of the meet-ing house in the book records that it“was solid mayde”; this adverbial andpreverbal use of solid is not found inthe seventeenth century, but the ex-pression in the letter has close paral-lels in poems by Alfred Tennyson: “Butlike a statue solid-set” (In MemoriamA. H. H., 1850); “Enoch stronger-madeWas master” (Enoch Arden, 1864). Theword boyhood is not found by the OEDbefore about 1745 and did not at firsthave the meaning it has in the phrase“during my boyhood” that appears inthe letter (‘the period of one’s life whenone is, or especially was, a boy’).

Helen Evertson Smith’s other literarywork and the times in which she wroteprovide context for her evident fabri-cation of the Samuel Smith letter. Shealso used the hoary literary device ofthe found letter in an apparently un-published story that is headed: “A for-gotten National Crime[: ] Bombard-ment of Copenhagen in 1807. Told inletters from an English lady married toa member of the Royal Council of Den-mark, to her father a member of theBritish House of Commons[.] Editedby Helen Evertson Smith”. On the out-side of the folded typescript is written:“This account is based on a few frag-ments of letters & the narrative manytimes heard in my childhood, from thelips of the old lady whom I have calledMrs. Castenskjöld, & carefully verifiedby comparison with the best printedauthorities. H.E.S.”10

4 In printing this excerpt and another onebelow two editorial conventions havebeen used to indicate changes made inthe manuscript in the writer’s hand: un-derlining marks additions, and doublebrackets ([[…]]) are added to enclosedeletions. Parentheses mark the expan-sion of an abbreviation.

5 Notebook “Colonial and Other Material”p. 20, in box “Scrap books, note books,& misc.,” Helen Evertson Smith papers,New-York Historical Society. The passageends at the end of a page, with no punc-tuation.

6 The passages with the other occurrencesof “Red Skin(s)” in the published letterhave no counterparts in the notebook.

7 I am grateful for the observations ofRichard W. Bailey on this and other as-pects of the language of the publishedletter (pers. comm., 3 January 2005).

8 English and French words cited in italicsare in the present standard orthogra-phies. Double quotes are used for directquotations, including citations of specif-ic non-standard forms in the sources;single quotes mark glosses and longertranslations of cited materials. Thespellings redskin and white-skin arethose of the OED lemmata.

9 Richard W. Bailey (pers. comm., 3 Jan-uary 2005); Bailey observes that theonly seventeenth-century use of get witha passive participle in the OED (in theexpression got acquainted with) isarguably not really a passive.

10 Box “Miscellaneous Mss,” Helen Evert-son Smith papers, New-York HistoricalSociety. In the title, the word Nationalwas added later.Presumably historians will want to re-eval-uate the assumed authenticity of the ex-cerpts from Juliana Smith’s manuscriptnewspaper that have made their way in-to the biography of Noah Webster (War-fel 1966: 41–43). Another publication in

Although the Samuel Smith letterhas many features inconsistent withits purported date of 1699, it is verymuch at home among the sort of writ-ings that were popular as part of theColonial Revival at the time of its pub-lication in 1900. This cultural move-ment, which came into full force withthe national centennial celebrations,influenced architecture, furniture,decorative arts, and popular historywith a nostalgia for Colonial times,which were viewed as a Golden Agefor household arts and domestic life.And in fact, other writers with theseinterests are known to have createdfictional diaries and memoirs as a wayof vividly evoking the Colonial Period,in some cases innocently and in somecases not (Norton 1998).11

Red and White As Racial Terms

The only one of the linguistic odditiesin Samuel Smith’s letter that has madeit into the Oxford English Dictionary isthe expression “Red Skins” (andattributive “Red Skin”), but in 1699,when the letter was purportedly writ-ten, American Indians had, in fact, notyet been racially characterized as red.In two lengthy studies of the use ofcolor terminology for races in Ameri-ca, the historians Alden T. Vaughan(1982) and Nancy Shoemaker (1997)have not found any use of the adjec-tive red to distinguish American Indi-ans as a separate race before the1720s.12 Vaughan (1982: 948) singled

out the apparent first use of redskin inthe 1699 Smith letter as “an isolatedexample” from such an early date, andhe concluded from this that “its authen-ticity is slightly suspect” and astutelysuggested that “it may reflect a latereditorial hand.” With the discovery thatthe purported 1699 letter has not mere-ly suffered from editorial interventionbut was the fictional creation of a latenineteenth-century writer, the fact thatthe myriad of references to Indians inEnglish documents of the Colonial Pe-riod never use the term redskin makessense, which would not be the case ifredskin really had been already in useby the end of the seventeenth century.

Eighteenth-century records do,however, attest the emergence of theuse of the color terms red and whiteby Native Americans as racial desig-nations, and the adoption of theseterms by Europeans in eastern NorthAmerica. The first uses of the term redas a racial label that Shoemaker(1997: 627) found are from 1725. Inthat year a Taensa chief talking to aFrench Capuchin priest in Mobile re-counted an origin story about a “whiteman,” a “red man,” and a “black man”(Rowland and Sanders 1927–1932, 2:485–486), and a Chickasaw chiefmeeting with the English Commis-sioner for Indian Affairs at SavannaTown referred to “White people” and“red people” (George Chicken inMereness 1916: 169). As Shoemaker(1997: 628) documents, this use of“red” was soon adopted in bothFrench and English and was conven-tional by the 1750s. Although Euro-peans sometimes used such expres-sions among themselves, however,they remained aware of the fact thatthis was originally and particularly aNative American usage.13

The French account from 1725 saysexplicitly of the Taensa that “they callthemselves in their language ‘RedMen’” (Rowland and Sanders 1927–1932, 2: 486).14 Since the Taensaspoke the same language as the Nat-chez (Swanton 1911: 22), the Taensaexpression was presumably the sameas the Natchez designation ⟨tvmh-hakup⟩ ‘Indian’ (Ann Eliza WorcesterRobertson in Brinton 1873: 488), whichin phonemic transcription is toM ‘man’(or in its earlier shape *taM) plushaakup ‘red’ (Geoffrey A. Kimball,pers. com., 17 November 2004).15

Similarly, the Chickasaws in 1725 were


the same genre is the account by Smith(1894) of a debate between AlexanderHamilton and William Livingston“(Edited from Unpublished Papers ofthe Late Governor John Cotton Smith, ofConnecticut).”

11 A second purported excerpt fromJuliana Smith’s diary in Smith (1900), adescription of a family dinner onThanksgiving Day, 1779 (Smith 1900:291–297, esp. 291), also shows evi-dence of being a later fabrication. TheHarvard University social historianLaurel Thatcher Ulrich has stated that itis obvious from the anachronistic lan-guage and descriptions in this accountthat “it is a 19th century fiction … a colo-nial revival invention” (pers. comm., 6October 2004; quoted with permission).

12 Shoemaker (1997: 633) cites a rare earlyuse of “red” to refer the skin of Indiansin André Pénigault’s narrative of Mobileduring the years 1699–1721. Pénigaultreports that in 1700 Pierre Le Moined’Iberville, when he first visited the Ba-yogoula village on the Mississippi, hadrejected the chief’s offer of women forhis men “by showing his hand to them[and] mak[ing] them understand that

their skin—red and tanned—should notcome close to that of the French, whichwas white” (McWilliams 1953: 24). (“M.d’Iberville, en leur montrant sa main, leurfit comprendre que leur peau rouge etbazanée ne devoit point s’approcher decelle des François, qui estoit blanche.”[Margry 1876–1886, 5: 394].) This is notevidence that the French used the ad-jective rouge ‘red’ in a racial sense in1700, however, given that Iberville wasusing gestures supplemented by Mo-bilian Jargon, and that Pénigault’s ac-count, which has details inconsistent withIberville’s journal (McWilliams 1981: 119),was written up, at least in the form thatsurvives, after its author had returned toFrance in 1721.For red paint or Carl Linnaeus asassumed factors in describing Indiansas red, see Vaughan (1982: 922, 945–946) and Shoemaker (1997: 625–626).

13 As an example Robert Vézina (pers.comm., 20 February 2005) cites Jean-Bernard Bossu (1768: 60), who quotes aNatchez elder as referring to “tous leshommes rouges,” explaining that, “C’estainsi que ces Sauvages s’appellent pourse distinguer des Européens qui sontblancs, & des Africains qui sont noirs.”In the translation of Seymour Feiler (Bos-su 1962: 39) this is “all the red men,” witha note: “This is what the Indians callthemselves to distinguish themselvesfrom the Europeans who are white andthe Africans who are black.”Shoemaker (1997: 632) suggests thatthe racial use of “red” and “white” mightowe something to the use of these col-ors for opposing moieties among tribesin the Southeast, but there is no neces-sary connection. The same colors canstand for different things in different con-texts. For example, both James Madi-son and Black Thunder, who used redand white as racial terms (see below),also used red (or bloody) and white tosymbolize war and peace, clearly intend-ing no linkage between the two idioms(Stagg et al. 2004: 175–177; Boilvin 1816).

14 The document has been published onlyin English translation.

15 The shallow-pointed brackets (⟨…⟩) en-close an exact transliteration of a pre-modern transcription. Italics is used forphonemic transcriptions, but for acces-sibility and typographical conveniencethese have been rewritten to use ordi-nary letters as much as possible. Tech-nical phonetic symbols have been re-placed as follows: double vowels(instead of vowel + raised dot) are writ-ten for long vowels (pronounced as inGerman or Finnish), and double conso-nants are written for long consonants (asin Italian); a superscript n (rather than aPolish nasal hook) marks the precedingvowel as nasalized (as in French); shand ch are unit phonemes pronouncedas in English (except in Mohawk; see n.34); zh has the sound of the s in Englishpleasure; x is a voiceless velar fricative(German ch or Spanish j); gh is a voicedvelar fricative (like Modern Greekgamma); M is a voiceless m (an m whis-pered through the nose); and an apos-trophe is used for glottal stop (thesound between the two syllables of theEnglish exclamation Uh-Oh!).

probably already using the expres-sion with the same basic meaning thatwas attested later as ChickasawHattak Api’ Homma’ ‘Indian’, which ishattak ‘person’ + api’ ‘stalk’ + homma’‘red’ (Munro and Willmond 1994: 32,101, 342); Pamela Munro, pers. com.,22 November 2004).16 Creek (which,like Chickasaw, is a Muskogean lan-guage) was using the expression isti-chaáti (‘person’ + ‘red’) for ‘Indian’ asearly as 1738, when it appeared in avocabulary beside isti-lásti (‘person’ +‘black’) for ‘Negro’ and isti-hátki (‘per-son’ + ‘white’) for ‘white person’.17

There is also evidence for the earlyuse of the label ‘white’ to refer to Euro-peans in Native American languages.David Zeisberger’s eighteenth-centu-ry compilation of Delaware wordsgives for ‘European’ both ⟨schwonnac⟩and ⟨Wâpsît Lennape⟩ (Zeisberger1887: 69). The first of these is theequivalent of Unami (modern Oklaho-ma Delaware) shuwánakw, the usualword for ‘whiteman’ in the twentiethcentury. The second expression iswaápsiit lënaáppe ‘white person’,apparently from the Northern Unamidialect used by the Moravian mission-aries; waápsiit is ‘(that, animate,)which is white’, and lënaáppe is other-wise the Unami word for ‘Indian’ (ana-lytically ‘ordinary man’) but hereappears in what is evidently an earlierand more general meaning. Actually,the word shuwánakw was felt to beuncomplimentary (Heckewelder 1819:131), even in the twentieth century,being based on a root shuw- ‘sour,salty’. Northern Unami waápsiitlënaáppe would have been the formalexpression used in high-register dis-course, corresponding to modernUnami weeyoópsiit ‘white person,white people’, formed from the samestem.18 Heckewelder (1819: 130) re-ports the belief that this was the firstname given to the Europeans, andthere is indirect evidence that a Dela-ware expression referring to Europe-ans as white was in fact in use alreadyby the middle of the seventeenth cen-tury. A Dutch document of 1652 refers

to people telling the Indians thingsabout the “Dutch or Whites” (Vaughan1982: 931). The phrase “or Whites”cannot be an explanation of “Dutch,”as the Dutch did not then use thisterm for themselves and would hardlyhave needed to add a synonym for“Dutch” anyway. The intended mean-ing of “or Whites” must be ‘or, as theycall us, Whites’, reflecting the termi-nology used by interpreters and par-tial bilinguals. Vaughan (1982: 932)gives other early uses of white appliedto Europeans by Indians or used byEuropeans in dealing with Indians.19

The First Known Uses of Redskin

It was from the use of red as a con-ventional iconic reference to NorthAmerican Indians, both by NativeAmericans and by representatives ofthe Colonial European powers, thatthe word redskin emerged. This de-velopment took place among a smallgroup of people in a limited area, partof what was historically called the Illi-nois Country. There, after France gaveup her territories on the North Ameri-can continent in 1762 and 1763,French communities remained behindat Saint Joseph (Niles, Michigan), Oui-atenon (Lafayette, Indiana), Vincennes,and Peoria, and from Cahokia (EastSt. Louis) to Kaskaskia on the Missis-sippi and across the river in Spanishterritory at St. Louis and St. Genevieve.The Indians in and around this regionspoke languages of three separatelinguistic families. Sauk-Meskwaki (alanguage spoken by the Sauks andthe Meskwakis, or Fox, in two verysimilar dialects), Miami-Illinois (alsospoken in several dialects), and Pota-watomi were Algonquian languages.Santee (or Dakota), the eastern dia-lect of Sioux, was a Siouan language.Iowa-Otoe-Missouri (also called Chi-were) was another Siouan language,with three tribal varieties, and Omaha-Ponca, Kansa, and Osage were very

close varieties of Dhegiha Siouan.Pawnee, spoken just up-river from theDhegiha-speakers, was a Caddoanlanguage. The first Europeans to haveextended contacts with these peopleswere speakers of French, and the firstEnglish-speakers in the area relied onFrench-speakers in their dealings withthe Indians. The restricted context oforigin makes it possible to describevery precisely the occasions when theword redskin was first used, and theidentities and backgrounds of thosewho were the first to use it are an inte-gral part of this account. It is extreme-ly unusual to be able to document theemergence of a vernacular expres-sion in such exact and elucidativedetail.

The earliest examples of redskin tobe found so far are emblematic of theprocess of its adoption in English. In1769 three chiefs of the Piankashaws,a Miami-speaking people then livingon the lower Wabash River, sent to Lt.Col. John Wilkins four talks, written outfor them in French, which were for-warded to London with translations andexplanations in August of that year.Wilkins, the British commander in Illi-nois, had his headquarters at FortCavendish (the former Fort deChartres), about 18 miles above Kas-kaskia on the east bank of theMississippi. He had the task of elicit-ing loyalty or at least peaceful behav-ior from the Illinois tribes, who werestill strongly attached to the Frenchfour years after their surrender anddeparture, a disposition that had ledto the assassination of the Ottawa warchief Pontiac by Peorias further up-river in Cahokia some months earlier(Kelsey 1979; Chevrette 1974). The“Old Sachem” Mosquito (FrenchMaringouin) ended his first talk with aninvitation:

“je serai flatté que tu Vienne parlertoimeme pour avoir pitie De nosfemmes et De nos enfans, et siquelques peaux Rouges te font Dumal je Scaurai soutenir tes Interestsau peril De ma Vie” (Johnson1921–1965, 7: 133).

This was translated as:“I shall be pleased to have youcome to speak to me yourself if youpity our women and our children;and, if any redskins do you harm, Ishall be able to look out for youeven at the peril of my life” (Johnson1921–1965, 7: 137–138).

The more “severe” speech of the warchief and village chief calledHannanas (evidently a French nick-name Ananas ‘Pineapple’) includedthese words:


16 The expression is at least as old as themid-nineteenth century, when it wasrecorded for Choctaw by Byington(1915:137), who glossed it “a man of ared trunk or stalk.”

17The Creek terms are phonemicized fromthe transcription in Greek letters used byJohann Martin Bolzius and Israel Chris-tian Gronau (Jack B. Martin, pers. comm.12 January 2005; Martin 2004: 74).

18 Unami weeyoópsiit (from *weewaápsiit)was back-formed from a plural in whichthe reduplication would be normal.

19 In 1796 Jean-Baptiste Truteau, describ-ing the tribes of the upper Missouri,wrote: “Ils ne scavent point faire la dis-tinction des nations policées, anglaise,francaise, Espagnoles &c. qu’ils nom-ment tous indifferemment hommesBlanc ou Esprits.” Annie H. Abel (1921:178) gives both the French text and hertranslation: “They do not know how to dis-tinguish among civilized nations, Eng-lish, French, Spanish, et cetera, whomthey call indifferently white men or spir-its.” The English alone is reprinted byNasatir (1952: 282), who has furthernotes.

“aparament que tu crois que je neserai pas capable De rien Lorsquetu me privera de poudre et Deballes, tu dois scavoir que je scaisme servir de Bois pour faire mesarmes et que avec ce meme bois yetue Des hommes, …“… tu Crois que je suis Orphelin,mes tous les Gens De ces riviereset tout les peaux rouges appren-deront ma mort” (Johnson 1921–1965, 7: 135).

This was translated as:“Apparently you think that I shall notbe capable of anything when youdeprive me of powder and ball. Youmust know that I know how to usewood to make my weapons and thatwith this same wood I kill men .…“… You think that I am an orphan;but all the people of these rivers andall the redskins will learn of my death”(Johnson 1921–1965, 7: 139).

The French texts were described as“an Exact Copy” of what the chiefs’French interpreter had written. Thefirst has “si quelques peaux Rouges”translated as “if any redskins,” andthe second has “tout les peauxrouges” translated as “all the red-skins.” The first appearances of red-skin in English are thus as literal trans-lations of what would be in standardFrench Peau-Rouge (in both casesthe plural Peaux-Rouges), which isitself in a translation from a dialect ofthe Miami-Illinois language.20

The first recorded public uses of theEnglish word redskin were nearly halfa century later, on 22 August 1812.21

The occasion was a reception in thePresident’s House in Washington foran Indian delegation representingseveral western tribes: the Osages,Sauks, Meskwakis, Shawnees, San-tees, Iowas, and Winnebagos. Thechiefs had come to Washington in twogroups, accompanied by WilliamClark, the famed explorer, who hadbeen appointed Agent of IndianAffairs for most of Louisiana Territoryin 1807, and Nicolas Boilvin, the agentfor the upper Mississippi tribes. Warhad just broken out with Great Britain,and the president, James Madison,was concerned about the threat tonational security posed by the activi-

ties of British agents among the Indi-ans (Clark 1812; Carter 1934–1969,14: 109; Brant 1961: 68–70; Foley2004: 191–192; Stagg et al. 2004:175–186).

Madison’s speech to the chiefsoffers a fine illustration from the earlyyears of the American republic of theuse of the color word red as a sus-tained metaphor for race. Madisonurged the chiefs to stay out of the fightbetween Britain and the UnitedStates, affecting a high rhetorical stylethat made liberal use of conventionalNative American diplomatic languageand metaphor.

“My red children: You have comethro’ a long path to see your father,… I thank the great spirit that he hasbrought you in health through thelong journey; …“The red people who live on thesame great Island with the whitepeople of the 18 fires, are made bythe great spirit of the same earth,from parts of it differing in colouronly” (Stagg et al. 2004: 175–176).22

Throughout his speech, Madisonreferred to “red people,” and usedsuch expressions as “all my red chil-dren,” “all the red tribes,” “their redbrethren,” and “between one red tribeand another.”

After Madison finished his addressto the chiefs they replied in turn. NoEars (Sans-Oreilles), listed by Clark(1812) as one of the second chiefs ofthe Little Osages, expressed satisfac-tion with the American administration,adding (Stagg et al. 2004: 181): “I knowthe manners of the whites and the redskins.” No Ears was a son of WhiteHair, who had usurped the role ofprincipal chief of the Osages as partof an intrigue with the trader PierreChouteau and had died in 1808(James B. Wilkinson in Pike 1966, 2:16–17, 32; Donald Jackson in Pike1966, 1: 288, n. 2).23 He had asked tobe taken to see the president in a let-ter to the Indian agent Auguste Chou-teau, a resident of St. Louis long in-volved in the fur trade, which he dic-

tated to the trader Sylvestre Labba-die, Chouteau’s nephew (Carter 1934–1969, 14: 466–468). Zebulon Pike, whogives his Osage name as Tetobasi,met him in 1806 (Pike 1966, 1: 296,301, 304–305, 310–314, 2: 31). TheIndian agent for the Osages, GeorgeC. Sibley, referred to him as the headwarrior of his band in 1813 (Carter1934–1969, 14: 713).24

French Crow, the principal chief ofthe Wahpekute band of Santee Sioux,pledged obedience and peace andsaid:

“I am a red-skin, but what I say isthe truth, and notwithstanding Icame a long way I am content, butwish to return from here” (Stagg etal. 2004: 182).

French Crow signed the treaties thatwere entered into by the EasternSioux bands in 1816, 1825, and 1830(Kappler 1904–1941, 2: 129, 254, 309).25

The fifth attestation of redskin tocome to light is also in the translationof an Indian speech. In 1813 MauriceBlondeau traveled up the MississippiRiver from St. Louis to the village ofthe Sauk chief known as Blue, whichwas at the mouth of the Des MoinesRiver. Blondeau had a Meskwakimother and had been promoted frominterpreter to sub-agent for the Saukswhile with the delegation in Washing-ton the previous August (Eustis1812).26 His mission was to persuadethe Sauks and Meskwakis to moveaway from the Rock River in westernIllinois, where they were subject to themalign influence of British agents, andsettle on the Des Moines River, and tosend fifteen chiefs to meet with Clarkin St. Louis. Arriving at the village on


20 I am indebted to John Ludwickson forpointing out these examples.

21 Redskins was ostensibly used byGeorge C. Sibley in a letter of 11 August1811, but the extant copies of this wererewritten with apparent additions in1860 (Sibley 1927: 204, Sibley 1965:185; George R. Brooks in Sibley 1965:185, n. 27).

22 Madison’s speech was earlier pub-lished in the National Journal in 1825and reprinted in Niles’ Register for 14May 1825 (vol. 28, pp. 175–176). It andtwo copies of the chiefs’ responses arealso on microfilm (Library of Congress,Presidential Papers Microfilm, JamesMadison Papers, Series 1, reel 14 [1812Apr 21–1813 Jan]).

23 No Ears was not the Osage principalchief who was called “White hair’s son,”as Stagg et al. (2004: 186, n. 1) state;Clark (1812) wrote the name of this chiefas “Kehagartongar.”

24 The same information in Sibley (1927:197) cannot be dated; see n. 21.

25 In the treaties of 1825 and 1830 FrenchCrow (khanghí washíchun) is identifiedspecifically as a Wahpekute; Clarkappears to have been mistaken in call-ing him a Yankton (Clark 1812).

26 For Maurice Blondeau see Reuben GoldThwaites (in Forsyth 1911: 356–357).There are several contemporary refer-ences to his half-Meskwaki parentage(Carter 1934–1969, 17: 385, 402; For-syth 1830). He was trading with theMeskwakis by 1801. British Lt. Col. Rob-ert McDouall (1895: 109–110) was toldthat he was “a very clever fellow” andhoped to entice him to the British sideand make him a Lieutenant in the IndianDepartment. He could sign his name,but the letters of his that survive do notappear to be written by him and NinianEdwards asserted that, among otherfailings, he was “incapable of makingout any reports” (Carter 1934–1969, 17:199). There is no evidence that hespoke English.

21 April, he held a council the sameday. There Blue reported that eightdays earlier the British agent RobertDickson had held a council with theupstart war leader Black Hawk andother pro-British Sauks, ten lodges ofwhom had moved the previous fall tothe upper Rock River, away from thevillage of the principal chiefs near theMississippi. Dickson had asked thatthey move north to Prairie du Chien, atthe mouth of the Wisconsin River, andthat their leaders go to parley at Ft.Malden, the main western outpost ofthe British just south of Detroit atAmherstburg, Ontario.

On 23 April Dickson’s agents deliv-ered the same invitations at the campof the Sauk chiefs Leggin andNomwait at the mouth of the IowaRiver.27 Nomwait, the principal Saukwar chief,28 responded with a ques-tion, which Blondeau translated intoFrench on the basis of the account hehad received:

“votre pere anglois vous a-t-il dit dequelle maniere il va supporter lespeaux rouges a faire la guerre auxaméricains? pour ma part je ne voisde quelle maniere il pourra support-er la guerre” (Blondeau 1813a).

A contemporary translation of Blon-deau’s report gives this as follows:

“Did your English father tell you inwhat manner he would support thered skins to make war against theAmericans, as for my part, I do notsee in what manner he will be able tosupport the war” (Blondeau 1813b).

The translation that contains this pas-sage was sent by Nicolas Boilvin,Blondeau’s boss, to John Armstrong,the Secretary of War (Blondeau1813b). A copy of Blondeau’s reportin French, probably originally dictatedrather than written by him, was sent toGovernor Ninian Edwards of Illinois(Blondeau 1813a), and in the transla-tion that was made for Edwards “lespeaux rouges” (lit. ‘the redskins’) is

translated “the red people.” The factthat in 1813 a translation made in St.Louis used “red skins,” but one madejust across the river did not, reflectshow new and restricted the use of thisexpression then was.

The First Appearances of Redskinin Print

Although the earliest recorded publicuses of the word redskin that havecome to light were in a very publicplace indeed, before James Madisonin the President’s House in Washing-ton, there is no evidence that thisexpression was picked up and spreadabroad by any of those that heard it onthat occasion. The speeches that con-tained it were written down and sur-vive, but they were not printed until2004, when the mammoth project topublish the James Madison papersbrought out the final set from the year1812. It was apparently not until 1815that the word began to show up inprint.

The first two known occurrences ofredskin that were published contem-poraneously are in translations ofspeeches by two Indian chiefs of dif-ferent tribes that were made within afew days of each other in July 1815and in almost the same place. Theoccasion was the series of councilsheld with representatives of the tribesof the upper Mississippi and lowerMissouri rivers by three “commission-ers plenipotentiary” appointed byPresident Madison and headed byWilliam Clark, who had become Gov-ernor of Missouri Territory on 16 June1813. The other commissioners wereGovernor Edwards of Illinois andAuguste Chouteau. The commission-ers were to negotiate and sign peacetreaties with the Indians in accor-dance with the ninth article of theTreaty of Ghent, which had been rati-fied in February, ending the War of1812. The treaties were signed atPortage des Sioux, on the west bankof the Mississippi in Missouri, andthere were other gatherings in St.Louis, about twenty miles to the south-east, both before and after (Carter1934–1969, 14: 679, 15: 68, n. 18;Fisher 1933; Foley 2004: 202–207).

The first of these published uses ofredskin (as “red skins”) is in the trans-lation of a speech delivered by theMeskwaki chief Black Thunder atPortage des Sioux on 20 July 1815.The atmosphere was tense. Duringthe opening ceremonies on 10 Julythe brother of the Sauk war chief

Nomwait had maintained the Saukrefusal to yield the land between theWisconsin and Illinois rivers that theUnited States claimed had beenceded by the treaty of 1804, and in hisresponse Clark had chastised theSauks and Kickapoos for not sendingchiefs who had the authority to signtreaties. After public expressions ofhostility from Indians of other tribesand, later, rumors of planned “mis-chief,” the Meskwakis, Sauks, andKickapoos had left Portage des Siouxto return home under cover of dark-ness that very night (Missouri Gazette,15 July 1815; Clark, Edwards, andChouteau 1834; A.H. Bulger 1890:194–195).

There is neither an official nor a pri-vate account of the daily activities atthe treaty councils, and the only eventrecorded for 20 July in an officialrecord is the signing of the treaty withthe Omahas (Kappler 1904–1941, 2:115–116). The newspaper report ofBlack Thunder’s speech, however,indicates that the commissioners alsohad a confrontational meeting withrepresentatives of the Meskwakis andof another tribe on that day. (The othertribe is unidentified but was most like-ly the Iowas, who were also tardy insending an acceptable delegation.)As the report does not refer to theOmaha treaty but does mentiontreaties that were signed on 18 and 19July, the meeting with the Meskwakismost likely took place before the sign-ing of the Omaha treaty. A letter writ-ten to a different newspaper on 20July reported that thirty Meskwakishad arrived at the council groundsfrom Rock River without their principalchiefs (Missouri Gazette, 22 July1815). But if these Meskwakis, whodoubtless included Black Thunder,had come from Rock River, they wereprobably coming from a council atwhich all the chiefs had been present.At the meeting on 20 July Clark musthave chastised the representatives ofthe Meskwakis and the other tribe fornot sending delegations with theproper authority to negotiate with thecommissioners, just as he had donewith the Sauks and the Kickapoos on10 July. The first Indian speaker torespond, the representative of theunnamed tribe, had “trembled like anaspin leaf” and was “scarcely … ableto articulate” (Niles 1815b: 113).

Then Black Thunder, who had keptto the American side throughout thewar, rose and addressed Clark.

“My Father—Restrain your feelings,and hear ca[l]mly what I shall say. Ishall tell it to you plainly, I shall not


27 The location of this camp on the IowaRiver is specified in a second letter(Blondeau 1813d).

28 Nomwait’s name appears also asNamoitte, Namirto, Neomite, Mamoite,Lamoite, la Moite, Amoite, Lemoite,LeMoite, and Leettoite. Nomwait is ashortening of a full form given in anEnglish spelling of Blondeau’s pronun-ciation as Namoitissort (Carter 1934–1969, 14: 662). The optional pronuncia-tion of /n/ as [l] was a feature of Sauk-Meskwaki in the nineteenth century, andthe sounds were no longer distinctphonemes. Variant forms of Nomwait’sname have sometimes been taken torefer to different men (Fisher 1933: 500,502; Foley 2004: 200, 206).

speak with fear and trembling. I feelno fear. I have no cause to fear. Ihave never injured you, and inno-cence can feel no fear. I turn to all,red skins and white skins, and chal-lenge an accusation against me”(Niles 1815b: 113).

Black Thunder went on to affirmfriendship with the United States whilealso asserting: “My lands can neverbe surrendered. I was cheated.” Hehad, as he said, moved his villageabove Prairie du Chien, thus putting itoutside the disputed area betweenthe Wisconsin and Illinois rivers (Niles1815b: 113; Anderson 1882: 207).Most Sauks and Meskwakis, however,considered the treaty of 1804 to be afraud based on deception (BlackHawk 1990; Hagan 1958: 16–25), andthe commissioners would have under-stood that Black Thunder was deliver-ing a diplomatically phrased messagefrom the principal leaders of his tribethat they, like the Sauks, would notrelinquish the disputed territory.

As a member of the Thunder Clan,Black Thunder could not hold thehighest tribal offices, either on thepeace side or the war side, but theearly settler John Shaw (1888:220–221) described him as of impres-sive mien and “a very remarkable ora-tor of his day [who] was consideredthe ablest speaker of the Sauks andFoxes of his time.”29 As a great oratorand a firm friend of the Americans hewould have been the obvious choiceto take the message of the Meskwakichiefs to Portage des Sioux. In fact, ashe reminded Clark in his speech, hehad told the president the same thingin Clark’s presence when he hadgone to Washington in 1812 with theSauk and Meskwaki chiefs to serve asthe speaker for the Meskwakis.30 After

that trip, Black Thunder was referredto a number of times from 1814 until1822, when he signed the treaty withthe “Sac and Fox Tribes of Indians” inSt. Louis (Anderson 1882: 207;Forsyth 1872: 191; Lyman C. Draperin Meeker 1872: 280; Kappler 1904–1941, 2: 202–203).

The second use of redskin toappear in print (in the phrase “one ofour red skin chiefs”) is in a renderingof some brief remarks addressed toClark by the Omaha principal chiefBig Elk.31 The exact date and placeare not recorded, but he was proba-bly speaking at a gathering in St.Louis a few days after the signing ofthe Omaha treaty on 20 July 1815, be-fore returning home up the Missouri:32

“Who would not wish to die amongyou! that he may be buried with thehonors of war, as you buried one ofour red skin chiefs, who died atPortage des Sioux” (Missouri Ga-zette, 29 July 1815).

Big Elk was principal chief of theOmaha from 1811 until his deathabout 1849 and another noted orator(O’Shea and Ludwickson 1992: 335,338; Ludwickson 1995: 142–143). TheIndian chief he refers to was BlackBuffalo, the principal chief of theTeton Sioux, who had died at the siteof the peace councils on 14 July andhad been buried with full military hon-ors the following day, when Clark wasabsent. Big Elk had given a funeraloration, which was widely reprinted(Niles 1815b; Bradbury 1817: 220–221; Drake 1833, 5: 114–115; Outa-

lissa 1821a, 1821b). His quotedremarks to Clark were presumablyeither transcribed by someone work-ing for the Missouri Gazette or ob-tained from official sources. Hedeclared that he represented fivebands (“villages”), including those ofthe Pawnees (Missouri Gazette, 5August 1815).

The third known occurrence in print(as “the red skins”) is in “the recital ofa talk received from an English officerin Canada, addressed to the” Sauks,Kickapoos, Winnebagos, Chippewas,Ottawas, Meskwakis, Menominees,and Iowas. The talk was reported bythe Sauks to the Indian agent NicolasBoilvin at a council he held with themin their village on Rock River (MissouriGazette, 16 September 1815), andBoilvin sent a transcript of it toGovernor Edwards:

“My Children—The Americans &English have taken one another bythe hand of friendship, and we hopeit will be for the benefit of the redskins of the Mississippi.”

The editor’s use of italics presumablyindicates that he considered theexpression “red skins” to be an Indianturn of phrase. The British talk report-ed by the Sauks was a speech sentby Lt. Col. Robert McDouall from hispost at Michilimackinac explaining theterms of the Treaty of Ghent to thewestern Indians allied with the British.This speech had been read to a gath-ering of over 1,200 Indians from vari-ous tribes by Capt. Thomas G. Ander-son on 22 May 1815 in the last coun-cil held under the British flag at Prairiedu Chien. Anderson then took thespeech to Rock River. The originalwording of McDouall that was eventu-ally rendered as “the red skins of theMississippi” was “all his Red chil-dren,” his referring to “Your GreatFather the King” (A.H. Bulger 1890:191–193; A. E. Bulger 1895: 155–161).

Redskin is known to have been useda number of times in public between1819 and 1822, but the record of thelast of these occasions actually ap-peared in print first. There are twenty-nine occurrences in Edwin James’saccount of Maj. Stephen H. Long’sexploratory expedition of 1819–1820(James 1823; Thwaites 1905). TheIndian Agent Benjamin O’Fallonrepeatedly used this expression (usu-ally printed as “red skins” or “red-skins”) in speaking to Pawnees andSauks, and three Pawnee chiefs and aSauk chief used it in their replies tohim; it also appears in James’s para-phrases of remarks by two speakersof Omaha. O’Fallon was a nephew of


29 The printed version of the treaty theMeskwakis eventually signed on 14September 1815 gives Black Thunder’sMeskwaki name as Mackkatananama-kee, translated as “the black thunder”(Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1837:181; Kappler 1904–1941, 2: 122); on theoriginal this is “Mack-ka-ta-na-na-ma-kee,” translated “The Black Thunder”(NA mfm T 494, r. 1, ratified treaty no.73). Another variant is “Mucathaana-mickee” (Kappler 1904–1941, 2: 203).In correct Meskwaki the name is mahka-tee-nenemehkiwa or mahkateewi-nene-mehkiwa ‘black thunderer’, i.e. ‘blackthunder being’.”

30 Clark (1812) listed him as “a Fox Deputyto speak Called the Big Thunder,” butthis can only be Black Thunder. Hegave the response to the president forthe Meskwakis after some brief remarksby the Meskwaki principal chief, called

Ridge (Stagg et al. 2004: 184–185). Theextant copies of Black Thunder’sspeech (again ascribed to “Big Thun-der”) do not include the refusal to sur-render the disputed land, but a remarkby Boilvin (1815) confirms that theMeskwakis made this point “at the coun-cil in the President’s House in Wash-ington in 1812.”

31 Big Elk’s name is given as Oupaatanga(Kappler 1904–1941, 2: 116) and Ong-patonga (James 1823, 1: 202; Cooper inBeard 1960, 1: 199; McKenney and Hall1933, 1: 273–282) or Ong-pa-ton-ga(James 1823, 1: 174; McKenney and Hallengraving in Cooper 1983, Plate 2), rep-resenting Omaha ánphan ttánga (John E.Koontz, pers. comm., 30 November 2004).

32 Because Big Elk refers to Portage desSioux in a way that indicates that he wassomewhere else, he must have beenspeaking in St. Louis, and this couldonly have been after the formal councilhad ended. Clark had a council houseat the southeast corner of Main and Vinestreets in St. Louis, where he had held aseries of meetings with the chiefs of theMissouri River tribes in June (Fisher1933: 499).


William Clark who had lived with hisuncle in St. Louis since his teens andhad become a successful Indian trad-er. He was made Indian Agent atPrairie du Chien for the upperMississippi tribes in 1817, and inMarch of 1819 he had been appoint-ed Indian Agent on the Missouri, hisfirst assigned task being to assist theexpedition (Michel 1999; Carter1934–1969, 15: 520–521).

O’Fallon addressed a gathering ofseventy Pawnees from the threebands on 9 October 1819:

“Pawnees encamp here and smokeyour pipes in security; you haveconducted yourselves badly, butthe whites will not harm the red-skins when they have them thus intheir power; we fight in the plains,and scorn to injure men seatedpeaceably by their fires” (James1823, 1: 159–160; cf. Thwaites 1905,1: 240).

O’Fallon used redskin several othertimes in the formal council the nextday, saying for example:

“Pawnees! I wish to be at peacewith you, and all the red-skins, I tellyou again. …“I will work a change among you,Red-skins” (James 1823, 1: 402,403; cf. Thwaites 1905, 2: 355, 356).

Petalesharo, the chief of the KitkahahkiPawnees, had earlier said:

“Father, I have seen people travel inblood. I have travelled in bloodmyself, but it was the blood of red-skins, no others.“Father, I have been in all the na-tions round about, and I have neverfeared a red-skin” (James 1823, 1:400; cf. Thwaites 1905, 2: 353).

At a meeting on 25 April 1820 theGrand Pawnee chief Long Hair(Tarrarecawaho) addressed his war-riors by way of responding toO’Fallon, saying (with the editor’s par-enthetical explanation):

“I have been to the town of the Redhead, (Governor Clarke, at St.Louis,) and saw there all that a redskin could see” (James 1823, 1:352; cf. Thwaites 1905, 2: 147).

In fact, in the style he adopted inspeaking formally to Indians, whichwas influenced throughout by theidiom of Native American oratory,O’Fallon never said Indian, only red-skin. After the return of the expedition,he used the word repeatedly inspeaking to a deputation of Sauks inSt. Louis on 3 April 1821, urging themstrenuously to cease their warfareagainst the Otoes, Missouris, andOmahas, saying, for example:

“A few winters since, I was a chief to

the red skins of the upper Missis-sippi … I am now chief to the redskins of Missouri, some of whoseblood you have spilt. …“When I first climbed the rapidMissouri, I found the red skins aswild as wolves. … They againraised their arms, every body whowere there at the time, both whitesand red skins, raised their arms,and looked around them” (James1823, 1: 223–224, n.; cf. Thwaites1905, 1: 314–315, n. 207).

In his reply the Sauk chief said:“All those braves have expressedtheir wish for peace, with the redskins of Missouri” (James 1823, 1:225, n.; cf. Thwaites 1905, 1: 317, n.207).

In two places James adopts the wordhimself in paraphrasing what Omahashad told him. From one, who wasalmost certainly Big Elk, he hadlearned:

“In their opinion, the Wahconda[“Master of Life”] has been moreprofuse in his distribution of gifts tothe white people, than to the red-skins” (James 1823, 1: 320; cf.Thwaites 1905, 2: 110).

And he reported that the hunterNozundaje

“says he has killed several red skinsin action, but never yet had the hon-our to strike a body” (James 1823,1: 183; cf. Thwaites 1905, 1: 268).

After O’Fallon’s 1821 council with theSauks, the next recorded uses of red-skin were in August 1821 at a treatyconference held at Chicago with rep-resentatives of the Ottawas, Chippe-was, and Potawatomis (Kappler1904–1941, 2: 198–201). There thelead speaker for the Potawatomis wasthe accomplished orator Metea (Mee-te-ay), a chief from the Wabash River(McKenney and Hall 1933, 2: 205–212), who declared:

“I am an Indian, a red-skin, and liveby hunting and fishing, but mycountry is already too small”(Schoolcraft 1825: 342).

And Topinabee (Topenebee), thePotawatomi principal chief, said:

“My Father,—I am a red skin. I donot know how to read or write, but Inever forget what is promised me”(Schoolcraft 1825: 347).

The speeches at the council weretaken down by Henry R. Schoolcraft(1825: 343), who stated that he had“adhered literally to the spirit and formof expression of the interpreters.”

The next recorded public uses ofredskin were in 1822 and appeared inprint that same year, before James’sbook. They were in two speeches by

members of a delegation of MissouriRiver Indians that was escorted byO’Fallon from Council Bluffs toWashington to see the eastern citiesand meet President James Monroe,much as the earlier group had beenbrought by his uncle to see Madisonin 1812 (Anonymous 1822; Morse1822: 241; Horan 1972: 45–49, 362;Viola 1972). There were 17 Indians inall from four Siouan-speaking tribesand the three bands of the Pawnees.At the official reception in the WhiteHouse on 4 February, after Monroeaddressed the chiefs, a Pawneeresponded first.33 He can be identifiedas Sharitarish, who led the Pawneedelegations as the brother and repre-sentative of the principal chief:

“My Great Father:“I have travelled a great distance tosee you—…“I am going to speak the truth. …The Great Spirit made us all—hemade my skin red, and yours white;he placed us on this earth, andintended that we should live differ-ently from each other. He made thewhites to cultivate the earth, andfeed on domestic animals; but hemade us, red skins, to rove throughthe uncultivated woods and plains,to feed on wild animals, and todress with their skins. He alsointended that we should go to war—to take scalps—steal horses fromand triumph over our enemies—cul-tivate peace at home, and promotethe happiness of each other. Ibelieve there are no people of anycolor on this earth who do notbelieve in the Great Spirit—inrewards, and in punishments. …“My father [Agent BenjaminO’Fallon] … settles all differencesbetween us and the whites andbetwen the red skins themselves—he makes the whites do justice tothe red skins and he makes the redskins do justice to the whites. …“Here, my Great Father, is a pipewhich I present you, as I am accus-tomed to present pipes to all the redskins in peace with us” (Daily

33 The texts of the five Indian speeches toPresident Monroe were printed in aWashington newspaper, The DailyNational Intelligencer (16 February1822). Possible reprintings in othernewspapers have not been searchedfor. The speeches are most accessiblein Morse (1822: 242–247), but this omitsa long section from one of them. Thesynopses written from memory byAnonymous (1822) generally agree withthe texts but contain additional materialthat appears to be authentic.


National Intelligencer, 16 February1822; cf. Morse 1822: 242–245,Buchanan 1824: 41–47).

The next to speak was the Omahachief Big Elk, the same man who hadbeen at the treaty council in 1815. BigElk began:

“My Great Father:“Look at me—look at me, my father,my hands are unstained with yourblood—my people have never struckthe whites, and the whites havenever struck them. It is not the casewith other red skins. Mine is the onlynation that has spared the longknives. …“The Great Spirit made my skin red,and he made us to live as we donow; … “I am fond of peace, my GreatFather, but the Sioux have disturbedmy repose. … they rove on the landlike hungry wolves, and, like ser-pents creeping through the grass,they disturb the unsuspected stran-ger passing through the country. Iam almost the only red skin op-posed to war—but, my Father, whatshould I do to satisfy the dead,when every wind coming over theirbones brings to my ears their criesfor revenge?” (Daily National Intelli-gencer, 16 February 1822).34

These earliest known attestations ofredskin (from 1769 to 1822) come froma very restricted context. Almost all ofthem were in translations of speechesor briefer utterances by Indians wholived in present-day Iowa and Missouriand the surrounding areas of Illinois,northwestern Indiana and extremesouthwestern Michigan, southern Min-nesota, and eastern Nebraska andKansas. The remainder were inspeeches to Indians of this area. Andsince the interpreters thus play a cen-tral role in the adoption of redskin asan English word, their identities andskills are key components of the spe-cific historical reality that provided thecontext for its origin.

The Interpreters

As in the case of the use of the simpleadjective red as a designation of racein the eighteenth century, first by Na-tive Americans and then by Europeans,the English word redskin emerged inthe nineteenth century as the render-ing of a Native American idiom. Ex-cept for O’Fallon, who was addressingIndians, all the speakers and writersknown to have used redskin down to1822 were translating the words of aNative American language: Miami-Illinois, Osage, Sioux, Sauk-Meskwaki,Omaha, Pawnee, or Potawatomi. Ex-cept for the cases in Illinois in 1769and 1821, the word was spoken orwritten, or both, by men workingdirectly or indirectly for William Clark,who supervised Indian affairs from St.Louis in several official capacities.

The work of interpreting was compli-cated by the fact that in the earlyyears of the nineteenth century therewere few men who could translatedirectly between English and theIndian languages of the Missouri andthe upper Mississippi. Instead, therewere two groups of interpreters.Those who knew the Indian languagestranslated between Indian and French,and other interpreters, who were bilin-gual in French and English, translatedbetween those two languages. Thefirst group, sometimes distinguishedas “Indian interpreters,” were oftenFrench-speaking mixed-bloods whotranslated between the languages oftheir French fathers and Indian moth-ers; some of these could also handleother languages, especially ones thatwere closely related but sometimeseven ones that were not. Also in thefirst group were a few Frenchmen,born in Canada, Detroit, or the IllinoisCountry, who had acquired proficien-cy in Indian languages from long con-tact with Indians. The interpreters inthe second group were most oftenEuro-Canadians, usually but notalways of French origin, who had pre-sumably grown up speaking bothEnglish and French after the Britishtakeover of the French possessions.Later there were Americans of Britishheritage who became interpreters.

The talks sent to Lt. Col. Wilkins bythe Piankashaw chiefs in 1769 werewritten in French, presumably by atrader living among them. Sir WilliamJohnson (perhaps), in forwarding thetranslation to London, comments that:

“The Speeches made at the Ilinois &at other places are generally takenby French Interpreters, who aremen of very little learning, this will

account for the badness of theFrench & the errors or Orthography”(Johnson 1921–1965, 7: 136).

Several interpreters accompanied thedelegation that went to Washington in1812 (Clark 1812). The Osage wordsof No Ears would have been translat-ed into French by Paul Loise, andSamuel Solomon would have trans-lated the French into English. Loisehad been born in St. Louis to Frenchparents in 1777; he was employed foryears as an Osage interpreter andhad a half-Osage daughter (Calhoun1822: 38; Lee 1834; Barry 1948: 8 n.23, 24 n. 60; Fischer 1999).35 Solomonwas a St. Louis tavern-keeper who wasborn in Montreal in 1773 to a GermanJewish father, the part-owner a trad-ing house at Michilimackinac, and aFrench mother (Fischer 1999; Katz1948: 253; Gundry 1957: 221–224;Armour 1985). He had a son with anOjibwa woman in 1797 and was pre-sent for his baptism in Michilimacki-nac in 1799, though the mother wasnot. It is possible that, like his youngerbrother William, he spoke Ojibwa. Hewas in St. Louis by January of 1801,when he married a Frenchwoman fromKaskaskia there, and in April 1803 hewas an interpreter at the arbitration ofan estate in Cold Water (Agua Fría,L’Eau-Froide), a settlement of English-speaking Protestants just north of St.Louis (Fischer 1999; St. Louis Archives1803). He served Clark as a Frenchinterpreter in St. Louis for a number ofyears.36

34 The “long knives” are the Americans;this expression (also “big knives”),which diffused through many NativeAmerican languages, originally referredspecifically to Virginians. It traces backto a conference with the Iroquois at Al-bany on 13 July 1684, where the Gover-nor of Virginia, Lord Howard of Effing-ham, was given the Mohawk namea’share’koówa ‘big knife’, a translationof the name Howard as if it were Dutchhouwer ‘cutlass’ (Woodward 1928). (Iam indebted to Marianne Mithun [pers.comm., 1993] for the phonemic form ofthe Mohawk word; sh represents a clus-ter s + h.)

35 His surname appears in some recordsas Louis and Louise.

36 Samuel Solomon (sometimes Samuel D.Solomon) appears in many St. Louisrecords from 1801 until the U.S. Censusof 1830 (NA mfm M19, r. 72), when hisage is given incorrectly as 60 to 70. Hissignature matches that of the son ofEzekiel Solomon who witnessed themarriage contract between his sisterSophie and Isidore Pelletier on 23 July1798, and the registration of his son’sbaptism 26 July 1799 (Thwaites 1908:501; 1910a: 113; Solomon family records,Mackinac Island State Park Commis-sion, Mackinaw City, Michigan). Thereseems to be no reason to believe thatthe St. Louis records refer to more thanone man, as Ehrlich (1997–2002, 1: 11)suggests might be the case. In report-ing his resignation in 1818, Clark refersto him as “the U.S. old Interpreter &Translator” (Carter 1934–1969, 15: 405).What is transcribed as “jun.” after hisname on the Osage treaty of 1808(Kappler 1904–1941, 2: 99) is most like-ly an error, perhaps a misreading of“int.” for interpreter or the like. (The orig-inal of the treaty is not in the NationalArchives and was not microfilmed.)

There were two interpreters of theSioux language with the 1812 delega-tion, Augustin Angé and John A.Cameron (Clark 1812). Angé, a nativeof Canada who had been one of thefounders of the French traders’ villageat Prairie du Chien in 1781 (Brisbois1882: 285; R. G. Thwaites in Boilvin1888: 249), was a man of middle agein 1812, so when Walking Buffalo, thePrincipal chief of the MdewakantonSioux, referred to his interpreter as “theyoung man whom we know” (Stagg etal. 2004: 182) he could only havemeant Cameron. French Crow spokenext and Cameron would have inter-preted for him also. Uniquely amongthe interpreters of the five Indian lan-guages spoken in the President’sHouse that day, Cameron would havetranslated directly into English ratherthan through the medium of French.

When Black Thunder made hisspeech on 20 July 1815 his inter-preters were apparently not the oneswho signed the treaty with the Mes-kwakis at the time it was finally exe-cuted on 14 September. The treatybears the signatures of Samuel Solo-mon and Noel Mongrain as interpret-ers, and the half-Meskwaki sub-agentMaurice Blondeau, who could also haveinterpreted, signed with the otherIndian agents (Kappler 1904–1941, 2:122). Mongrain was a French-Osagemixed-blood who had apparentlylearned Meskwaki in addition to Osageand Kansa despite the enmity be-tween the Osages and the Meskwakis(Kappler 1904–1941, 2: 218–219;Barnes 1936: 240; D. Jackson in Pike1966, 1: 290, n. 4). On 20 July howev-er, neither Solomon nor Mongrainappears to have been at Portage desSioux. Solomon was not among theinterpreters that signed the Omahatreaty on that day, and Mongrain didnot sign any of the treaties of 18–20July.37 Blondeau, on the other hand,was at Portage des Sioux on 18 and19 July (Kappler 1904–1941, 2: 111–115), and he must have been the onewho translated Black Thunder’s wordsinto French. By the same logic, Blon-deau’s French translation would havebeen put into English by whoever had

performed the same function at theOmaha treaty the same day.

Four names appear after the othersigners at the bottom of the 1815 treatywith the Omahas, where the interpret-ers normally signed; their respectiveroles are not specified but can be de-duced. Louis Dorion, a half-Siouxmixed-blood who also signed treatieswith the Sioux and the Iowas, wouldhave been the interpreter betweenOmaha and French.38 Louis Decou-agne, Jacques Metté, and John A.Cameron, who each signed seven oreight treaties, would have been the in-terpreters between French and Eng-lish.39 Big Elk’s remarks to Clark aboutthe funeral for the Teton chief BlackBuffalo were therefore presumablytranslated into French by Louis Dorion,and his French rendering could havebeen translated by any of the otherthree, or by Samuel Solomon, whowould have been available in St. Louis.

Nicolas Boilvin, who was born inQuebec in 1761 and apparently knewlittle English, would have written his re-port of the talk received from the Sauksin French (Thwaites 1910b: 314; Gregg1937: 80–83; Scanlan 1943: 161).40 Thiswas translated into English by John P.Gates, also a native of Canada, whoreceived it from Boilvin (R. G. Thwaitesin Street 1888: 357; Missouri Gazette,16 September 1815). Gates and Mon-grain had worked together as the in-terpreters for the Osage treaty of 1808(Kappler 1904–1941, 2: 95–99). Boil-vin’s interpreter from Sauk into Frenchwould certainly have been the half-

Meskwaki Maurice Blondeau, whowas Boilvin’s subordinate.

The Omaha interpreter for EdwinJames was John Dougherty (1791–1860), who had learned to speak anumber of Indian languages (Withers1930–1931: 359–360; Jones 1969:303, n. 19; Maximilian 1839–1841, 2:599, 612); he was later the Sub-Agentat the Council Bluffs agency. Thespeeches of the Pawnee chiefs toO’Fallon in 1820, and doubtless in1819, were translated by Charles Simo-neau (“Charly Simenon,” “Semino”)and Alexandre Papin (Calhoun 1822:38). Both lived in the Pawnee villages,Papin being from an established St.Louis trading family (Jones 1969:295). The translator for the Saukchiefs in St. Louis in April 1821 wasLouis Pettle, the salaried Sauk andMeskwaki interpreter there (Calhoun1822: 55). If “Pettle” was a garbledform of Pilet, as in other cases(Danckers et al. 2000), he may havebeen Louis Pilet dit LaSonde, a mem-ber of a French family that lived inCahokia and Kaskaskia.

The Potawatomi speeches at theChicago treaty council in 1821 weretranslated by Whitmore Knaggs (1763–1827), a long-time interpreter andlater Indian agent and sub-agent whohad been born to a trading couple onthe Maumee River in Ohio (Calhoun1822: 80–81, 1823: 11; Ross 1902). Hehad been the interpreter for Ottawa,Chippewa, and Potawatomi at the De-troit treaty of 1807 (Kappler 1904–1941, 2: 95), and the Chicago treatywas his seventh.

When Sharitarish addressed Presi-dent Monroe in 1822 his interpreter wasapparently Étienne Malboeuf, who hadbeen paid by O’Fallon as an interpreterto the three Pawnee bands in 1820(Calhoun 1822: 38).41 Malboeuf hadbeen one of the French boatmen on thefirst leg of the Lewis and Clark expe-dition in 1804 (Clarke 1970). He wasborn about 1775, presumably a half-blood, since his father had children withtwo or three Indian women. The factthat he had a half-Mandan sister sug-gests that his mother may also havebeen from the Missouri River. He wasliving in Kaskaskia when the explorershired him, and he was in the militia at


37 Mongrain (whose surname seems to bewritten “Mograine” on the Meskwakitreaty) was an interpreter only fortreaties with the Osages (12 September1815), the Missouri River Sauks (13September 1815), and the Meskwakis(14 September 1815) (Kappler 1904–1941, 2: 120, 121, 122). He had alsobeen the interpreter for the treaty signedwith the Osages on 10 November 1808(Kappler 1904–1941, 2: 99).

38 Louis Dorion was born in 1782, the sonof Pierre Dorion (1740–1810), who wasborn in Quebec City, and a YanktonSioux woman named “Holy Rainbow”(Anonymous 2004). He did not speakEnglish (Pilling 1887: 50–51).

39 Jacques Metté (sometimes spelledMatte), who was also an interpreter ofthe Potawatomi language, was born inDetroit (Carter 1934–1969, 17: 402). Asan interpreter working for Ninian Ed-wards he explained a letter written byEdwards to the Kickapoos (Carter1934–1969, 16: 229).

40 Many letters written by Boilvin in Frenchsurvive, and transcribed copies of mostof these were assembled by Peter L.Scanlan (“Transcript and Translations ofLetters and Documents … Sent by orConcerning Nicholas Boilvin … 1811–1823”; Platteville Mss D, Peter L. Scan-lan Papers, Folder 1; Southwest Wis-consin Room, Karrmann Library, Univer-sity of Wisconsin at Platteville, Platte-ville, WI. The new translations are byMarian Scanlan). Gov. Edwards, in list-ing employees who might have aliensympathies, says he was born in France(Carter 1934–1969, 17: 401).

41 Vouchers for payments to O’Fallon’sinterpreters are in the NA RG 217, SIA,box 14 (1821–1822), folders 339–341,account no. 5707. Some men whoostensibly signed vouchers from thisperiod and were paid on the sameaccount had actually remained at theCouncil Bluffs agency.


St. Louis in 1809 (Marshall 1926, 2:98). Apparently he had learned English.

When Big Elk’s turn came to respondto the president his words were trans-lated by William Rodgers, “an Ameri-can.” Rodgers was encountered inMay 1811 near the mouth of the Plattewith “a Frenchman from St. Louis,” whoemployed him as an interpreter, andan Omaha woman and her child thathe tried unsuccessfully to send backto her father (Bradbury 1817: 55–59).He took out his own license to tradewith the Indians “on Missouri & waters”later the same year (Marshall 1926, 2:202). Rodgers signed treaties with thePawnees, Omahas, and Otoe-Missourisas an interpreter in 1825 and was paidas an interpreter “for the Otoes, Ma-has, &c.” in 1826 (Kappler 2: 258, 260,262; Barbour 1827: Abstract No. 2).Since the Otoes and Missouris spokethe same language and Omaha andKansa were also mutually intelligible,Rodgers would have been the inter-preter for all the Siouans in the dele-gation. It is possible that he also spokePawnee, but neither the fact thatDougherty planned to send him to thePawnees to try and stop a human sac-rifice in 1827 (Jones 1969: 299–301;Thurman 1970: 71) nor the fact that hesigned the Pawnee treaty of 1825 withPapin prove this. Papin was certainlya Pawnee speaker, and Rodgers’ rolemay simply have been to translatebetween French and English for him.42

Louis Tesson Honoré, an interpreter“of several languages” (Lee 1834: 365),was paid on the 1821 trip as “Indianinterpreter for the Saks, Foxes, andSioux Nations on the Mississipy,” butthese tribes were not represented inthe delegation and he served O’Fallonmainly as an assistant for local ar-rangements.43 It is uncertain which ofO’Fallon’s three interpreters would

have been the one who apparentlytranslated for both Big Elk and thePawnee chief Ishkatappa when theymet with Jedidiah Morse (1822: 249).

The Native American Sources

of Redskin

It is clear from the earliest citationsthat redskin was regarded as anIndian expression. It was at first usedonly to translate what Indians said oras a consciously adopted Indian turnof phrase employed in formally ad-dressing Indians. The tribal identitiesof the speakers who were quotedusing this word in the period from1769 to 1822 point to its specific lan-guages of origin.

The French expression Peaux-Rouges in the written talks of the Pian-kashaw chiefs in 1769 (and from thisredskins) translates a Miami-Illinoisword for ‘Indian’. An Illinois dictionarywritten at the beginning of the eigh-teenth century has ⟨nitarante8irouki⟩‘je suis rouge’ (⟨8⟩ is for French ou),representing nitaranteewiroki ‘I amred’, literally ‘I have red skin’ (Masthay2002: 71).44 The components of theverb stem are aranteew- ‘red’ and -i-rokii ‘(have such) skin’ (compare thepossessed noun nirookayi ‘my skin’,with ni- ‘I, my’; -ay abstract suffix; -iinanimate singular ending). The dic-tionary translates this verb literally, butit would hardly have had any applica-tion except to specify racial member-ship. Its unattested plural participlewould have been eeranteewirokiichiki‘those with red skins,’ which is likelythe form the Piankashaw chiefs usedto mean ‘Indians’ half a century later.When Miami-Illinois was documentedin the nineteenth century, however,this verb was apparently out of use,but there was an exactly parallel stemoonsaawilokii- ‘have a brown or yellowskin’ (with oonsaaw- ‘yellow, brown’)that formed words used specificallyas racial designations: oonsaawiloki-

ita (pl. oonsaawilokiichiki) and oon-saawilokia ‘Indian’.45 Perhaps this re-placement had to do with the apparentrecent evolution of Algonquian colorterminologies to accommodate theneed for consistent labels for dyedand manufactured items; this wouldhave entailed a contraction of therange of colors that could be referredto as ‘red’ and a shift from copperyand tawny shades to brighter hues.

The expressions “red skins” and“white skins” in the speech of the Mes-kwaki chief Black Thunder conform tothe general idiom for talking aboutraces in Meskwaki: The way to say ‘beof the same race’ is literally ‘have thesame sort of skin’.46 To this day theword for ‘white person’ is waapeshki-nameshkaata ‘one that has white skin’,as also in the Sauk dialect (Whittaker1996: 106). This has waapeshk- ‘white’+ -i-nameshk ‘skin’ (as in nenameshkaya‘my skin’, with ne- ‘I, my’; -ay abstract;-a animate singular), and a verb-form-ing suffix -ee ‘have’, replaced by -aain participles (which have -ta ‘onethat’, -chiki ‘ones that’).

More complicated is the corre-sponding word for ‘Indian’. In Mes-kwaki the everyday word is nenootee-wa, but writings by native speakersfrom the early twentieth century alsohave a rare, high-register expressioneesaawinameshkaata ‘one that has abrown skin’ (with asaaw- ‘brown, yel-low’ and a vowel change required inparticiples). And in an account of tra-ditional history written in Meskwaki byCharley H. Chuck (1914) this word isglossed as meeshkwinameshkaata‘one that has red skin’ (with meshkw-‘red’ and vowel change). Given that inMiami-Illinois the earlier expressionmeaning ‘one with red skin’ has beendisplaced by one meaning ‘one with

42 As pointed out by John Ludwickson(pers. comm., 14 March 2005), to whomI am indebted for several references,Rodgers was presumably the “Rodger,commonly called Bell” (i.e., Bill Rodg-ers) encountered on the Missouri byPaul Wilhelm, Duke of Württemberg inJuly and August of 1823 (Paul 1835:275, 277, 311, 334, 338; 1973: 290–291,329, 351, 355), but he was not thePawnee named Rogers who enteredschool at the age of 17 in 1824, asclaimed by Thurman (1970: 279, n. 23).

43 Louis Tesson Honoré was born toFrench parents in St. Louis in 1789(Fischer 1999). At least among English-speakers he called himself, and wasreferred to as, Honoré, but the familysurname was Tesson, Honoré being adit name, a sort of inherited family nick-name (McDermott 1941:67–69).

44 The authorship of this dictionary is un-known, but it evidently incorporates ear-lier materials, probably including com-pilations of the first great student of thelanguage, Jacques Gravier, to whom ithas been traditionally ascribed. Thewriting of the manuscript can be datedto the first two decades of the eigh-teenth century, probably after 1702(Michael McCafferty, pers. comm., 13March 2005). I am indebted to McCaf-ferty and to David J. Costa for discus-sions of these and other points and forbringing to my attention the Miami andIllinois words discussed here.

45 These forms are phonemicizations byDavid J. Costa (pers. comm., 12 and 14March 2005) of transcriptions in manu-script materials of Albert S. Gatschet andin Kerr (1835: 26) and Anonymous (1837:47). I have written the element -rok-(-lok-) ‘skin’ with a short o when part of averb stem on comparative grounds (cf.Kickapoo -nok- ‘skin’ and Meskwaki -nok-‘constitution’ < *‘body’ < *‘skin’), but along oo (taken over from the noun) isalso possible; I assume the automaticshortening of word-final vowels.

46 A Native American in a myth written byAlfred Kiyana (1913: 9) refers to: manieeshinameshkeeyaani eeshinamesh-kaachiki ‘people of my race’, literally‘people whose skin is the way my skinis’. Meskwaki words are phonemicizedon the basis of my fieldwork in Iowasince 1990 but cited from syllabarymanuscripts in the NAA.

brown skin’, it is possible that a paral-lel replacement took place in Mes-kwaki, a closely related and geo-graphically neighboring language. Itis also possible, however, that Chuckwas explaining the old term, whichtoday would seem to mean ‘one withyellow skin’, by alluding to the Englishexpression. Whether Nomwait andBlack Thunder said literally ‘redskins’or ‘brownskins’, however, they wereusing an established expression basedon Sauk-Meskwaki idiom that the in-terpreters rendered according to thecurrent convention in local Frenchand English.

Potawatomi is like Meskwaki in hav-ing two words for ‘Indian’ (Gailland1877: 165, phonemicized); the ordinaryword nëshnabe has an Ojibwa cog-nate, and the rare and now obsoleteexpression wezawnëmshkad, lit. ‘onewith brown skin’, is the cognate of theMeskwaki synonym. Knaggs’s transla-tion “I am an Indian, a red-skin” indi-cates that Metea used both expres-sions together, and, in fact, Gaillandalso gives “red skin” as an explana-tion of the second word, though hecertainly knew that this was not the lit-eral meaning.

The expression “red skin” in thespeeches of the Omaha chief Big Elkis a literal translation of Omaha xínha-zhide (‘skin’ + ‘red’), used in the nom-inal phrase níkkashinga xínha-zhide‘Indian’, lit., ‘person (with) red skin’ (Tte-ukkanha in Dorsey 1890: 682). Omahaalso had níkkashinga xínha-ska ‘whiteperson’, lit. ‘person (with) white skin’(Tte-ukkanha in Dorsey 1891: 23). Aspointed out by John E. Koontz, towhom I am indebted for these forms,these expressions are uncommon and“occur … in the context of politicalrhetoric” (pers. com. 19 November2004, 7 May 2005).47 Quapaw, anotherDhegiha Siouan language, was usingzho-zhitte (‘flesh’ + ‘red’, i.e. ‘redskin’)for ‘Indian’ at least by the 1820s, asthis expression was recorded by Gen.George Izard, the governor of Arkan-sas Territory, in a vocabulary that wasreceived in Philadelphia on 10 Jan-uary 1827 (Robert L. Rankin, pers.com., 13 January 2005; Freeman andSmith 1966: 318).

The reference to skin in designa-tions of race is found in other NativeAmerican languages besides Miami-Illinois, Sauk-Meskwaki, Omaha, andQuapaw and dates back to the sev-enteenth century. In 1687 an Onon-

daga chief, speaking an Iroquoianlanguage, described the kings of Eng-land and France as “both of one Skinnmeaning white Skinned, & not brownas they Indians are” (sic; quoted inVaughan 1982: 933). Other words for‘whiteman, European’ in Algonquianlanguages that mean ‘one with whiteskin’ are Kickapoo waapeshkinokaata;Shawnee weewaapilookayeeta (Voe-gelin 1938– 1940: 411); Miami waap-hkilokiita (pl. waaphkilokiichiki),48 withvariants in other dialects of Miami-Illinois but in the early eighteenth-cen-tury Illinois dictionary only with the lit-eral gloss ‘(one) who has white skin’;49

and Ojibwa wayaabishkiiweed (Baraga1853: 393, phonemicized; cf. Rhodes1985: 350). In Unami the word for In-dian is meexkeeohkë´ssiit, lit. ‘the onewith red flesh’.50

For the languages of some of theearly users of expressions that weretranslated as ‘redskin’ no term for‘Indian’ with the same literal meaningis known. Osage and Pawnee have orhad words that literally mean ‘red per-son’. Osage níkka zhúche ‘Indian’ is‘man’ + ‘red’ (LaFlesche 1932: 109,282; John E. Koontz, pers. com. 19November 2004). Pawnee cahrikspa-hat (Skiri dialect cahispahat), also‘person’ + ‘red’, was known in thenineteenth century as a word for‘Indian’ in general but is now restrict-ed to the Five Civilized Tribes ofOklahoma (Douglas R. Parks, pers.com., 23 February 2005). For Santeeand the other dialects of Sioux, on theother hand, no expression for ‘Indian’is attested that contains ‘red’ (DavidS. Rood, pers. com., 2 February 2005;Raymond J. DeMallie, pers. com., 3February 2005).51 It is thus uncertainwhat Santee expression might have

existed in 1812 that French Crow couldhave used with the meaning ‘I am aredskin’. It is possible that shared for-mal idioms were used in inter-tribaldiplomatic language in the early nine-teenth century that have not survived,and it is suggestive that Lakota has aword hásapa ‘black person’ (Roodand Taylor 1996: 447), literally ‘(hav-ing) black [sápa] skin [há]’, whichmay earlier have been part of a largerset of racial designations on this pat-tern. Alternatively, Cameron may havetranslated French Crow’s word for‘Indian’ according to the literal mean-ing of the corresponding expressionin other languages, which is presum-ably what was done by the inter-preters of Osage and Pawnee.

In any case, it is evident that a con-vention of translating the word for‘Indians’ in all Indian languages withFrench Peaux-Rouges and Englishredskins had become establishedamong the close-knit group of inter-preters that worked for William Clarkand his agents, many of whom hadlinguistic skills in more than oneIndian tongue. Even if these expres-sions were used in translating lan-guages that did not have a term withthis exact meaning, the linguistic evi-dence shows that this usage was a lit-eral translation of expressions used inat least some of the Algonquian andSiouan languages of the area. And therendering of an Algonquian elementmeaning ‘brown’ as rouge or redwould attest the persistent influenceof an older and more widespreadNative American convention.

French Peau-Rouge

The occurrence of redskin in theEnglish version of many Indianspeeches reflects a key role playedby French, the language of most ofthe traders and Indian agents in theold Illinois Country in the early years ofthe Illinois Territory and the LouisianaTerritory (called the Missouri Territoryafter 4 June 1812). In the case of thetalks of the Piankashaw chiefs in 1769and Maurice Blondeau’s report ofNomwait’s speech in 1813 the two-stage translation through French isdocumented. The Piankashaw wordwas written down as French “peaux


47 The second form occurs in the cited textwith the suffixed animate plural article-ma ‘the’.

48 Phonemicized from Volney (1804: 436)and Anonymous (1837: 47).

49 Illinois waapihkilokiita ‘qui a la peaublanche’, waapilokiita ‘qui a le teint, lapeau blanche’ (Masthay 2002: 217,phonemicized).

50 The Kickapoo and Unami words arefrom my field notes.

51 In two of the earliest Lakota vocabularieswichhásha ‘Indian’ is explained as liter-ally ‘red man’ or ‘red men’—i.e., wichhá‘man’ + sha red’ (Husband 1849; Hay-den 1862: 378). Robert Rankin (pers.comm., 29 April 2005) points out, how-ever, that this is most likely a folk ety-mology specific to Lakota (and Yankton)wichhásha, as the older form of this wordappears to have been wichháshta, theword for ‘man, men, person, mankind’ inSantee (Riggs 1852: 241), which is sup-ported as old by the forms in the mostdivergent languages of the Dakotansubgroup, Assiniboine winchháshta and

Stoney wichhásta. Today Lakota wich-hásha is ‘man, person’, and ‘Indian’ islakhóta, especially applied to Sioux Indi-ans and their allies, or ikché wichhasha,with ikché ‘common, wild’ (Rood andTaylor 1996: 477, 479; Ingham 2001: 141).

rouges,” and this was rendered as“redskins.” Nomwait’s Sauk word wastranslated into French by Blondeau asles Peaux-Rouges, which is attestedin the copy of his report that survives,and this in turn was translated intoEnglish as “the red skins.”

The use of Peau-Rouge in Missis-sippi Valley French is implied by Mc-Dermott (1941: 113–114), though hecites no specific cases. Apparently,however, it was readily adopted notonly in translations of Indian speechesbut also in official communicationsaddressed to Indians. An early exam-ple that is not a translation is in a letterwhich Don Francisco Cruzat, theSpanish Lieutenant Governor of UpperLouisiana, wrote in French to the Sauksand the Meskwakis on 20 November1781. He had met that day with theirchiefs, the Meskwaki nicknamed Wis-consin (“Huisconsin”) and the Saukcalled Leggin (“Mitasse”),52 and wastrying to persuade the tribes “not totake part in the war between the whites”:

“De tout tems vous savez que tousvos Enciéns péres les français avecqui vous êtes poussé, et sorti de laterre, ont aimé les peaux rouges,… et l’arbre dont je vous parle c’estvôtre encién père le français vousvoyez mes Enfants qu’il est debout,et qu’il ne veut point voir verser lesang de sez Enfants les peauxrouges” (Cruzat 1781).

‘From earliest times you have knownthat your former fathers, the French,with whom you have sprouted andgrown up out of the earth, haveloved the redskins, … and the treeI’m speaking to you about is yourformer father, the Frenchman. Yousee, my children, that he is stand-ing, and that he has no wish to seethe blood of his children, the red-skins, spilled.’

Here, amid much rhetoric that uses Na-tive American metaphors, phraseolo-gy, and fictive kinship relations, “lespeaux rouges” ‘the redskins’ is usedtwice to refer to the Indians who wereloved by the French before their de-parture.

Robert Vézina has found severallater examples from the early period.53

The trader Jean-Baptiste Truteauwrote in 1795 about an encounter withthe Yankton Sioux the year before:

“les hantons approuvoient toutesles paroles que je leur avois dit, dis-ant que leurs chefs avoient étés endifferentes fois au páys des françois;qu’ils avoient étés bien reçus dugrand chef des espagnols, le perede toutes les nations peaux rouges”(Truteau 1914: 312– 313).‘The Yanktons expressed approval ofall the words that I had addressedto them, saying that their chiefs hadbeen at different times in the coun-try of the French, and that they hadbeen well received by the greatchief of the Spaniards, the father ofall the redskin tribes.’ (Adaptedfrom Nasatir 1952, 1: 270–271.)

Vézina observes that on the severaloccasions when Truteau used theexpression Peaux-Rouges in his writ-ings, it was always in the context ofspeeches delivered by or to NativeAmericans. For example, Truteau usedthis expression in the summary of aletter he sent to two other French tra-ders in 1795 laying out points theyshould make in talking to the Mandans;this appears in translation in Nasatir(1952, 1: 304). In a speech Truteaureports making to the Poncas in 1795he not only used this term, but he alsoreferred to himself and the othertraders as “nous autres peaux blanch-es” ‘we white-skins’.54 The Poncasspoke the same language as theOmahas, and both expressions wouldhave literally translated the racial ter-minology they used themselves.

A letter the trader and explorerJames Mackay wrote to John Evanson 28 January 1796 survives in a con-temporary French translation that con-tains the phrase “toutes les peauxrouges” ‘all the redskins’.55 This occurs

in a rehearsal of talking points Evanswas to use in addressing the Indiantribes he encountered and is hence ofa piece with Truteau’s usage. It mayindicate that Mackay’s English origi-nal had redskins.

The nearly universal word for ‘Indi-an’ (noun and adjective) in the Frenchof the Mississippi Valley in the eigh-teenth and early nineteenth centurieswas sauvage, an affectless term with-out negative connotations (McDermott1941: 8, 136). In Boilvin’s letters theIndian Department is le Départementsauvage and Indian gifts (to the Pres-ident) are présents sauvages. Expres-sions of opprobrium for Indians re-quired additional words, as in “cestDiables de sauvages” (ces diables desauvages) ‘those wretched Indians’,lit. ‘those devils of Indians’ (Vasquez1812), and “sais barbare sauvage” (cesbarbares sauvages) ‘those Indian sav-ages’, lit. ‘barbarians’ (Boilvin 1813a).

Peaux-Rouges appears as a simplesynonym for sauvages in sponta-neous discourse, not addressed to orintended for Indians, only in the nine-teenth century. The first example tocome to light is in a letter BaronetVasquez wrote to his brother Benito inSeptember 1812 about the defense ofFort Madison on the west bank of theMississippi during a three-day assaultby Winnebago warriors:

“je ta sure que je me sui ennuyezlorsquils se sont retirez car cetait unplaysire de tirer sur cest pauxrouges” (Vasquez 1812).(I.e.: Je t’assure que je me suisennuyé lorsqu’ils se sont retirés, carc’était un plaisir de tirer sur cesPeaux-Rouges.)‘I swear to you that I was sorely dis-appointed when they withdrew, as itwas a delight to shoot at those red-skins.’

Antoine François Vasquez, known asBaronet, was born into a St. Louis tra-ding family in 1783. He spoke French,Spanish, and “several Indian lan-guages” but only rudimentary English.He was an interpreter for Pike in 1806and had been promoted to secondlieutenant in the United States Army in1811 (Lecompte 1969).

The letters of Nicolas Boilvin attest anumber of instances of Peaux-


52 The Sauk principal chief called Legginin 1813 could have been the same man,or he could just have been given thesame nickname.

53 I am grateful to Robert Vézina for a sum-mary of his findings (pers. comm., 20February 2005); the French texts of theexamples from Truteau, Mackay, andVasquez were located by him. TheTruteau and Vasquez quotations havebeen verified from the cited sources.

54 This is found in an unpublished versionof Truteau’s journal (Robert Vézina,pers. comm., 21 February 2005).

55 The letter is: James Mackay, Instruc-tions donée a Jean Evans pour travers-er ce continent (28 January 1796),Louisiana Papers, BANC MSS M-M 508,box 4, folder 365 (The Bancroft Library,University of California, Berkeley). It hasbeen translated by Nasatir (1952, 2:410–414, esp. 414).The translator treats “les peaux rouges”as feminine (shown by the feminine plur-al agreement on toutes ‘all’, instead ofmasculine tous), like the feminine nounpeau ‘skin’, as if the Indians were desig-nated by synecdoche as literally ‘redskins’ (‘skins that are red’) rather than bya compound meaning ‘redskins’ (‘thosewith red skins’), which would requiremasculine agreement. Robert Vézina

points out that the use of this expressionwith feminine plural agreement is alsofound elsewhere (pers. comm., 20 March2005). Most likely this usage reflects anuncertainty over how to treat the genderof the compound in contexts whereovert agreement is required, and thishas led to a hypercorrection.


Rouges as the equivalent of sauvagesin the years 1813–1818. (The absenceof this usage from his earlier and laterletters may or may not be significant.)For example Boilvin wrote to theSecretary of War John Armstrong fromSt. Louis on 22 May 1813:

“jais Enployez tous les moyent pos-sible poure connaitre tous LesDaimarche dais EnGlais En vaireLes amerriquint En charchant de Levez tous Les paux rouge contrenous, pare Les Espiont que jai tenustous Levaire Sure Leure rive” (Boil-vin 1813b).(I.e.: J’ai employé tous les moyenspossibles pour connaître tous lesdémarches des Anglais envers lesAméricains en cherchant de levertous les Peaux-Rouges contre nous,par les espions que j’ai tenus toutl’hiver sur leurs rives.)‘I have employed all possible meansto gain knowledge of all the actionsbeing taken by the English in oppo-sition to the Americans as they seekto enlist all the redskins against us,by means of the spies that I havekept all winter on their shores.’

He wrote again to the Secretary ofWar on 5 December 1813:

“je ma Dresse avous poure vouscommuniQuez Les DispossisiontDes Sauvage qui abite Sure le mis-sisipi aprais avoire fait plussieurevoyage permis les Sac et renardDont jen est retirres sure le missour-ris poure les Eloignez de la Gaire, etfuire les consaiye Des EnGlais quiont Etez toujours laperte de tout Lespaux rouge” (Boilvin 1813c).(I.e.: Je m’adresse à vous pour vouscommuniquer les dispositions dessauvages qui habitent sur leMississippi, après avoir faitplusieures voyages parmi les Sacset Renards, dont j’en ai retiré sur leMissouri pour les éloigner de laguerre, et fuire les conseils desAnglais, qui ont été toujours la pertede tous les Peaux-Rouges.)‘I’m writing to you to inform you ofthe state of mind of the Indians wholive on the Mississippi, having madeseveral journeys among the Sauksand Meskwakis, some of whom Ihave removed to the Missouri to getthem further from the war and to getaway from the counsels of the Eng-lish, which have always been theruin of all the redskins.’

In these and other cases Boilvin ap-pears to use “paux rouge,” etc. (i.e.,Peaux-Rouges ‘redskins’), in exactlythe same way as the usual term sau-vages ‘Indians’, or, if anything, withmore of an implication of solidarity.

For some of the letters in whichBoilvin used Peaux-Rouges as a syn-onym of sauvages there are contem-porary translations. In one of these herefers to his dealings with the tribes atPrairie du Chien in 1818 and to his re-port to tribal representatives of thefriendly attitude towards them that hehad observed in the President andother Washington officials:

“je me suis Rendus a la destinas-siont doux je Doy Ex sai cuttez leDevoire Dont je suis charges Envaire les Paux rouge … tous lesconsidairres quille ont Envoyez mevoire je leure Est Dit … que je naisvus Ent heux que du bien Envairetout les paux rouge” (Boilvin 1818).(I.e.: Je me suis rendu à la destina-tion d’où je dois exécuter le devoirdont je suis chargé envers les Peaux-Rouges … Tous les considérésqu’ils ont envoyés me voir, je leur aidit … que je n’ai vu entre eux quedu bien envers tous les Peaux-Rouges.)

This was translated as:“I have … arrived and shall com-mence the performance of the dutywith which I am entrusted towardthe Red Skins, … I have communi-cated to all the cheifs whom theyhave sent to me, … that I witnessedthe most Friendly Sentiments, ontheir part, towards the Red Skins”(Boilvin 1818).

It is evident that “Red Skins” in suchcases is completely dependent on theFrench expression it translates, andthat it is used in an entirely affectlessmanner, like French sauvages.

Outside of St. Louis and the com-munities in close contact with it,French Peau-Rouge, like English red-skin, appears to have been unknownin the early nineteenth century. It isevident that even by the 1850s neitherexpression was familiar to Ursula M.Grignon, a member of an old FrenchCreole family in Green Bay, Wiscon-sin. She found the original of Cruzat’s1781 letter to the Sauks and Mes-kwakis “among the old papers of herfather” and presented it to Lyman C.Draper, the corresponding secretary ofthe State Historical Society of Wiscon-sin, who had interviewed her father,Augustin Grignon, in May and June of1857 (Draper 1857a, 1857b: 504, n.).In the translation she also furnishedshe rendered “les français … ont aiméles peaux rouges” as “the French …have loved the red complexion” and“sez Enfants les peaux rouges” as“his children, the red skin.” The firstFrench translator of James FenimoreCooper also knew this idiom in neither

language. In the 1823 translation ofThe Pioneers, “you would have calledhim as comely a red-skin as ye everset eyes on” has become “vous auriezavoué qu’il étoit impossible de voirune peau rouge plus avenante”;“There will soon be no red-skin in thecountry.” has become “Bientôt il n’yaura plus de peau rouge dans cepays.” (Cooper 1823, 1: 264, 3: 192,1980: 155, 403). In these passagesthe translator interprets “red-skin” as“red skin” in the literal sense. By thetime he reached the end of the book,however, he may have deduced thatthis was intended as a compound,given that on the next to the last page“les Peaux blanches” and “les Peauxrouges” appear for “the whites” and“the red-skins” (Cooper 1823, 3: 294,1980: 455).56

The Speeches From the 1815 Peace

Council in Print

Since official records of the July 1815peace councils do not exist, thespeeches of Black Thunder and BigElk survive only because they ap-peared in newspapers. Big Elk’s fu-neral oration for Black Buffalo, whichhe had given on 15 July, and BlackThunder’s speech of 20 July wereprinted in The Western Journal, a St.Louis weekly, having been providedto the paper by the commissioners’secretary, Robert Wash, who wouldhave transcribed them directly fromthe interpreter’s words. The brief re-marks made by Big Elk that include thephrase “red skin chiefs” were printedin a second St. Louis weekly, theMissouri Gazette (29 July 1815). BigElk also drew attention with a speechhe had made when he and otherchiefs from the Missouri River tribeshad first arrived in St. Louis (MissouriGazette, 10 June 1815; Douglas1908: 378), and with a much longerspeech that he apparently deliveredat a joint council with other tribes atthe end of the treaty conference(Missouri Gazette, 5 August 1815).57

No copy of the issue or issues ofThe Western Journal that containedBig Elk’s funeral oration and BlackThunder’s speech is known, but

56 The misunderstanding by the Frenchtranslator is clearly more serious thanthe apparent gender variation in the ear-liest French uses in North America,which is hardly more than orthographic;see n. 55.

57 James (1823, 1: 174–176; Thwaites 1905:258–261) also gives a speech of his.

Wash’s transcripts caught the eye ofHezekiah Niles, who reprinted them inhis Baltimore paper Niles’ WeeklyRegister under the heading “IndianEloquence” (Niles 1815b). Niles hadearlier reprinted the brief remarks ofBig Elk which contained “red skin”(Niles 1815a: 29), but this short speechwas apparently not reprinted further.A writer using the name Outalissa(1821a, esp. 61–62, 68) includedBlack Thunder’s speech and Big Elk’sfuneral oration in a long article onIndian oratory that appeared in TheNew Monthly Magazine (published inPhiladelphia) and was reprinted inThe Literary Gazette, a Philadelphiaweekly (Outalissa 1821b, esp. 586–587, 589).58 From there Samuel Drake(1833, 5: 113–114) reprinted BlackThunder’s “excellent speech,” con-firming the attention it had receivedwith the observation that it had madethe speaker “remembered by many.”

James Fenimore Cooper

One of those who noticed Black Thun-der’s speech was evidently JamesFenimore Cooper. Cooper’s novel ThePioneers, which appeared in 1823, in-troduced the word redskin to a wideaudience. (He wrote it “red-skin,” “Red-skin,” and “red skin.”) In this book theword is used only by the white hunterNatty Bumppo (Leather-Stocking),who spoke “Delaware,” and his “Mo-hican” friend Chingachgook (JohnMohegan) (Cooper 1980: 26, 155, 403,452 [twice], 455), as when the dyingChingachgook says (p. 403): “Therewill soon be no red-skin in the coun-try.”59 In The Last of the Mohicans(published in 1826), the second of theLeather-Stocking tales though set ear-lier in time, the same characters usethe word redskin, as do the Huronchief Magua and an unnamed Dela-ware. When Magua says, “The pale-faces have driven the red-skins fromtheir hunting grounds,” and, “the red-skins know how to take the Yen-geese,” he is speaking in English

(Cooper 1983: 103, 261). When Maguasays, “a red skin never ceases to re-member,” and, “The red-skins shouldbe friends,” he is speaking Huron(Cooper 1983: 250, 289–290). Cooperclearly uses redskin as an affectlessdesignation for Native Americans,and by inserting it into dialogue spo-ken between Indians he shows that hetook the English word to be the trans-lation of an inclusive term of self refer-ence in one or more Native Americanlanguages.

When Cooper was writing the bulkof The Pioneers (which his publisherbegan printing in the spring of 1822[in Cooper 1980: 468]) the word red-skin had apparently appeared in printin the East only in the speeches BlackThunder and Big Elk had given in thesummer of 1815, and in those Sari-tarish and Big Elk delivered in Wash-ington in 1822. The later speecheswere published in a Washington news-paper, but they were not generallyavailable before the appearance ofMorse’s Report to the Secretary ofWar (Morse 1822). This book onlycame out toward the end of 1822,however; it was deposited for copy-right on 23 September, and by thetime it would have become availablethe word would already have been setin type in the first and probably alsothe thirteenth chapters of The Pio-neers (Cooper 1980: 26, 155). James’sAccount, containing many uses of theword by O’Fallon and Indian speak-ers, was published in Philadelphia on11 January 1823, three weeks beforethe publication of The Pioneers on 1February 1823 (in Cooper 1980: 468),much too late to have been Cooper’ssource.60

Of the speeches of Black Thunderand Big Elk that contain forms of theword redskin, Black Thunder’s is theone known to have attracted laterattention and to have been reprintedafter 1815. In fact, a good case canbe made that Cooper would haveseen this speech specifically in TheLiterary Gazette. This journal, pub-

lished only in 1821, was the continua-tion of The Analectic Magazine (1813–1820), also called The AnalecticMagazine and Naval Chronicle (1816).The Analectic was a journal Cooperhad been reading, presumably for itscoverage of naval affairs, since longbefore he began writing novels (Beard1960, 5: 216).61 Cooper would thusalmost inevitably have seen BlackThunder’s speech in The LiteraryGazette, and this publication was theprobable source of his knowledge ofthe word redskin. Cooper’s familiaritywith Black Thunder’s speech is alsostrongly indicated by his use of theparallel expression “white-skins” inthe words he wrote for the dyingChingachgook in The Pioneers:

“Hawk-eye! my fathers call me tothe happy hunting-grounds. Thepath is clear, and the eyes of Mo-hegan grow young. I look—but I seeno white-skins; there are none to beseen but just and brave Indians”(Cooper 1980: 421).62

Black Thunder’s phrase “red skins andwhite skins” was the only place theexpression white-skin had appearedin print before Cooper’s novels, andthis word has hardly been used sinceexcept in echoes his usage.

The appearance of speeches byBlack Thunder and Big Elk in a publi-cation Cooper was likely to have seenin 1821 may lend a new perspectiveto an event that took place later thatyear. The delegation of Missouri RiverIndians that met with President Mon-roe on 4 February 1822 had arrived in


58 The pseudonymous author has a Britishperspective on American Indians andacknowledges receiving “specimens oftheir eloquence” from “an Americanfriend”; the article also appeared in theLondon edition of the monthly. Outalissagives Big Elk’s funeral oration with theaddition of an inappropriate vocative“Warriors” as the first word.

59 David Simpson (1986: 169) unaccount-ably describes Natty Bumppo as “thesingle user of the term red-skin,” citingonly this very page.

60 Both Morse (1822) and James (1823)were in the “Quarterly List of NewPublications” in The North AmericanReview (Boston) for January 1823 (vol.16, issue 38, p. 227). An announcementthat James’s Account was published on11 January 1823 is in the SaturdayEvening Post (Philadelphia) for that day.The speeches in James’s book with theword redskin are not among the pre-publication excerpts printed in TheNational Gazette and Literary Register(Philadelphia) and reprinted in Niles’Weekly Register for 5 October 1822.

61 I am greatly indebted to Donald A.Ringe for pointing out the significance ofCooper’s life-long passion for the Navy,of which he wrote a history, and thedirect evidence that he read TheAnalectic Magazine (pers. comm., 27November 2004), and to Wayne Franklinfor additional detailed discussion andsupporting arguments (pers. comm., 5December 2004).

62 The OED cites the first use of white-skinfrom chapter 14 of The Last of theMohicans (1826), giving a quotationwith two ill-advised ellipses and onerespelling that appears in full in Cooper(1983: 138) as: “’Twould have been acruel and an unhuman act for a white-skin; but ’tis the gift and natur of anIndian, and I suppose it should not bedenied!” (This is Hawk-eye reacting toChingachgook’s scalping of a French-man.) The same book also has “menwith white skins” (Cooper 1983: 227). Iam indebted to Wayne Franklin fordrawing my attention to the earlier ap-pearance of white-skin in The Pioneersand for the information that it appears inthe first edition in volume 2 (chapter 19),page 282.

Washington on 28 and 29 November.In the intervening period O’Fallon hadescorted 15 of the Indians and twointerpreters from Washington to NewYork, where they spent the nights of11 to 16 December 1821 at the CityHotel. This was the very hotel whereCooper stayed and where he was liv-ing that week, and the meetings helater mentioned having with Big Elkand the most famous of the Pawneesnamed Petalesharo, the son of theSkiri chief (Beard 1960, 1: 199; Beardin Cooper 1983: xix), must have takenplace there at that time.63 Without fur-ther information, however, Coopercould not have connected the travel-ing Big Elk to the published funeraloration, which Outalissa ascribed toan unnamed “chief of the Teton tribe,”but obviously an encounter with BigElk, O’Fallon, and the interpreters cre-ated an additional opportunity forCooper to learn or confirm the wordredskin.64

The Indian speeches that used theword redskin were soon forgotten, butCooper’s novels eventually broughtthe word to universal notice. It was notlisted in the first edition of JohnRussell Bartlett’s Dictionary of Ameri-canisms (1848), but when it appearedin the second edition (Bartlett 1859:358) the illustrative quotation was anutterance of Natty Bumppo from TheLast of the Mohicans. The spread ofredskin as a neutral synonym forIndian during the middle decades ofthe nineteenth century is also illustrat-ed by the revision of the biography ofWilliam Penn by the British authorWilliam Hepworth Dixon. In describingan attitude towards the Indians on the

part of Penn that would later beascribed to Samuel Smith’s father,Dixon had at first written:

“though a fervent believer in thenative virtues of the Red Indian,when treated with truth and fair-ness, he could not help feeling thatbefore he could have time toimpress their rude minds with confi-dence in his integrity of purpose,some unfortunate mischance mightlead to sudden and serious mis-chief” (Dixon 1851: 247).

Two decades later, in “A New Edition”described as “substantially a newbook,” Dixon rewrote this as:

“though a strong believer in thenative virtues of the Redskins, whenthese savages were treated well,—he could not help feeling that beforehe might have time to impress theirminds with confidence in his integri-ty of purpose, some mischancemight lead him into peril of his life”(Dixon 1872: 205).

Here, in a passage highly sympathet-ic to Indians, “Red Indian” has be-come “Redskins” and “savages.”65

Cultural and Historical Factors

The spurious occurrence of redskinwith a date of 1699 has masked thetrue history of the adoption of thisword into English, which has been fur-ther obscured by the omission fromthe standard dictionaries of citationsfrom James Fenimore Cooper, themost important agent of its diffusion.The word redskin reflects a genuineNative American idiom that was usedin several languages, where it grewout of an earlier established and morewidespread use of “red” and “white”as racial labels. This terminology wasdeveloped by Native Americans tolabel categories of the new ethnic andpolitical reality they confronted withthe coming of the Europeans.

The sudden emergence of the Eng-lish word redskin in print during thetreaty negotiations of 1815 can plausi-bly be seen as directly stimulated bythe circumstance of those events. Thetreaties were greatly empowering forthe Indians, who ceded nothing andwere loaded with gifts in exchange foraccepting a mutual peace. The hugeintertribal gathering at Portage desSioux encouraged a sense of supra-tribal Indian identity in dealing with thefledgling U.S. Government, continuing

the similar effect of the politicalalliance and religious movement pro-moted by the Shawnee chief Tecum-seh and his brother Tenskwatawa, theShawnee Prophet, which had reachedthe eastern parts of the Illinois Count-ry. The travel to Washington of multi-tribal delegations to be a part of theformation of national policy towardsIndians also helped forge a pan-tribalself-image and identity among theleaders of different Indian peoples.When Black Thunder wanted to referinclusively to all the assembled tribesand to both the Americans and theFrench, he said “red skins and whiteskins.” When Big Elk told Clark howimpressed he had been by the obse-quies for Black Buffalo, at which, sure-ly for the first time, an Omaha princi-pal chief had given a funeral orationfor his Teton counterpart, he availedhimself of the inclusive term “red skin”as an expression of solidarity.

At the same time, the views of theofficials and the local whites towardsIndians were forced to evolve. Theoratorical powers and political skills ofthe leading chiefs demanded andreceived respect. Local newspapersthat as recently as the month beforewere denouncing scalpings now werepublishing the texts of Indian speech-es both as significant news eventsand as admirable intellectual achieve-ments. In these changed circum-stances the interpreters began to usethe literal translation redskins forNative American expressions theymight earlier have rendered Indians orred men, and the newspapers fixed inprint speeches that displayed the newusage in a confident and appealingvoice. The local French equivalent,Peau-Rouge, played a role in this,though the earliest uses of the Englishword differ from the contemporane-ous uses of the French word in beingstrictly an Indian expression, usedonly by or in speaking to Indians.

Cooper’s use of redskin as a NativeAmerican in-group term was entirelyauthentic, reflecting both the accurateperception of the Indian self-image andthe evolving respect among whites forthe Indians’ distinct cultural perspec-tive, whatever its prospects. Thedescent of this word into obloquy is aphenomenon of more recent times.


63 The receipt for O’Fallon’s payment toChester Jennings (“Jenings”), the pro-prietor of the City Hotel, is in NA RG217, SIA, box 14 (1821–1822), Accountno. 5707 (B. O’Fallon). Cooper’saccount with the hotel for this period is:“James Cooper Esquire to C. JenningsDr., 2/17/1822,” James Fenimore Cooperpapers, box 4, American AntiquarianSociety, Worcester, MA; I am indebtedto Wayne Franklin for the Cooper refer-ence and for the information onCooper’s activities at this time.

64 Cooper referred to Big Elk as Ongpa-tonga (n. 31), which he translated as ‘legros cerf’, in an English letter to theDuchess de Broglie. He gives his tribeas “Omawhaw.”Charles Bird King painted a portrait ofBig Elk in Washington in 1822; this wasamong those that burned in the Smith-sonian fire in 1865. A replica by King (inthe Thomas Gilcrease Institute of Amer-ican History and Art, Tulsa) bears thepainted title: “Big Elk, or Great Orator,Omawhaw Chief.” (Viola 1972: 29).

65 The OED quotes this use of “Redskins”citing Dixon (1872) but gives it underthe 1851 date of Dixon’s earlier book.

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