[Ads-l] snatch 'female pudenda'

[Charles C Doyle]

An article in the recent (Dec. 2014) _Smithsonian_ magazine, vol. 45, no. 8, pp. 50-57, "Massacre at Sand Creek," by Tony Horwitz, quotes a dispatch written by Capt. Silas Soule, regarding the 1864 massacre of a thousand Cheyennes and Arapahos (men, women, and children) by the U.S. army near Sand Creek, Colorado:

"Squaws [sic] snatches were cut out for trophies" (p. 54).

The OED's earliest citation for that sense of the word (snatch n.14) is from 1904, in the _English Dialect Dictionary_.

I wonder if the American instance from 1864 or 1865, as given in the quotation, is credible.

--Charlie
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