"Squaw"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 11/2/2006 11:52 AM, Edward Callary wrote:
> From William Bright's "Sociolinguistics of the S-Word:"
>
>"[Rayna] Green ... notes that nineteenth century American writers
>tended to classify Indian women either as 'Indian princesses' or as
>'squaws,' the latter routinely characterized as ugly and whorish.
>Thus James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 novel THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
>refers to 'the crafty squaw ... the squalid and withered person of
>this hag. ... In 1882 the memoirs of Lt. James W. Steele ...
>referred to 'the universal "squaw" * squat, angular, pig-eyed,
>ragged, wretched, and insect-haunted.'"

The derogatory sense was not universal in the 19th century, as
illustrated I think by at least one of the OED2 quotations,
the  "1836 Backwoods Canada 160 The Indians are very expert
in..fishing; the squaws paddling the canoes with admirable
skill."  And despite Cooper, Hawthorne refers respectfully to "Squaw
Sachem" in "Main Street" (1849):

"We discern an Indian woman,--a majestic and queenly woman, or else
her spectral image does not represent her truly,--for this is the
great Squaw Sachem, whose rule, with that of her sons, extends from
Mystic to Agawam.  That red chief, who stalks by her side, is
Wappacowet, her second husband, the priest and magician, whose
incantations shall hereafter affright the pale-faced settlers with
grisly phantoms, dancing and shrieking in the woods, at midnight."

And later: "... the Squaw Sachem, and the Sagamore her son, once
ruled over this region, and treated as sovereign potentates with the
English settlers, then so few and storm-beaten, now so powerful."

(In case anyone is wondering, the Squaw Sachem -- and her husband
Wappacowet -- are historical figures; a deed of part of her "rule" is
in the records of the Registry of Deeds of Middlesex
County.  Unfortunately, she was away from one of her several homes in
1621 when a group of Plymouth settlers went looking for her there
["Mourt's Relation"].  And apparently no one of that period thought
to record the name of a woman; she died in 1650.)

Joel

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