Squaw

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Squaw (from Pidgin Massachusett (a Pidginized version of a language belonging to the Algonquian family) squa, meaning "young woman") is an English loan-word whose present meaning is "(an) American Indian woman", regardless of tribe, and often with a derisive connotation.

Eric Partridge states that squaw, "comes by aphesis, from Narraganset esquaw, a woman (cf. the Massachuset squas)." The Narraganset, like the Massachuset, both spoke languages of the Algonquian language family.

The English term has become highly offensive to many Native American communities in North America.

[edit] Objectionable Meaning?

During the 1970s, some American Indian activists objected to the term. The earliest known objection is from Thomas E. Sanders and Walter W. Peek, Literature of the American Indian (Glencoe Press, 1973), p. 184:

"That curious concept of 'squaw', the enslaved, demeaned, voiceless childbearer, existed and exists only in the mind of the non-Native American and is probably a French corruption of the Iroquois word otsiskwa [also spelled ojiskwa] meaning 'female sexual parts', a word almost clinical both denotatively and connotatively. The corruption suggests nothing about the Native American’s attitude toward women; it does indicate the wasichu's [white man's] view of Native American women in particular if not all women in general"..

However, this statement is not true: "squaw" does not translate to 'female sexual parts' [1]. Although Algonquian linguists also reject this proposed etymology, this incorrect information has been repeated by several journalists (e.g. Oprah Winfrey) and inspired a number of local initiatives to rename places with "squaw" as a part of their names (such as Squaw Peak in Phoenix, Arizona). As recently as October 2006, members of Idaho's Coeur d'Alene Tribe called for the removal of the word "squaw" from 13 locations in Idaho [2].