What is the origin of sitting Indian style? Dots or feathers?
What is the origin of sitting Indian style? Dots or feathers?
I would guess feather, as they were leading a more primitive lifestyle (no furniture) when first encountered by Europeans.
The natives of N. America were mistakenly called "Indians" because Columbus thought he had found a new route to India that didn't involve sailing all the way around Africa.
Trade with India went back many centuries before Columbus, and traders and explorers would have been familiar with paintings and carvings from India - which often show people sitting in the lotus position.
Of course, to be certain, one would have to find a use of the phrase in an old-world publication written prior to 1492.
BTW, "dots" and "feathers" are considered pejorative.
I prefer "Curry" and "WooWoo" :)
The natives of N. America were mistakenly called "Indians" because Columbus thought he had found a new route to India that didn't involve sailing all the way around Africa.
I've read something that suggested Columbus knew he hadn't found a new route to India. In fact that he knew that the "Americas" were there and approximately where there were.
There were maps of the South American coast from Portuguese ships blown off course that pre-date Columbus, and evidence that Columbus had access to them.
However, the Italian and Spanish crowns were desperate to break the trade monopoly of the Dutch East India company. So to fund his expedition, Columbus scammed the Italian and Spanish crowns with tales of a western route to India.
And they call it "sitting criss-cross applesauce" in American schools now...
Because "sitting Indian-style" is offensive...
Because "sitting Indian-style" is offensive...
I've also seen it referred to as 'squaw style', although that must also have been deemed offensive because it's been cancelled by Google. There is, however, one usage on SOL.
AJ
'squaw style'
That would definitely be offensive. We had a Squaw Peak in Phoenix that was renamed Piestewa Peak after an American Indian soldier killed in the Iraq war (I can never remember her name so I had to look it up). And SR51 was originally called the Squaw Peak Pkwy, but was renamed the Piestewa Freeway. Yeah, "squaw" is offensive.
Yeah, "squaw" is offensive.
The story I've heard on that is that "squaw" comes from one of the Native American languages (I don't recall which one it's supposed to have come from) and that in the language it's from, it's a vulgar reference to female reproductive anatomy.
I have no idea if this story is true. But if it is squaw roughly equals cunt.
it's a vulgar reference to female reproductive anatomy.
A competing claim has been made in recent years, despite the clear evidence that squaw comes from an Algonquian word for "woman,'' and in fact without discussing this evidence. This is the claim (often somewhat garbled) that squaw actually comes from the Mohawk word ojiskwa', which we can politely translate 'vagina'. Mohawk was spoken some 200 miles from Plymouth in the Mohawk Valley by the principal enemies of the Massachusett Indians. It is, of course, a language of the Iroquoian family, which is completely distinct from the Algonquian family. Ms. Charwood-Litzau refers to (but misquotes) the earliest published reference to this idea that I know of, an anthology called Literature of the American Indian edited by Thomas E. Sanders and Walter W. Peek (Berkeley: Glencoe Press, 1973). There the origin is given as "probably a French corruption of the Iroquois word otsiskwa meaning `female sexual parts''' (p. 184). The spelling used is the traditional system used by French Canadian missionaries, but the source of the information is not given. This claim has more recently become widely known because of the following statement made on the Oprah Winfrey television show in 1992 by Suzan Harjo: "The word squaw, for example, is an Algonquian [sic] Indian word meaning 'vagina,' and that'll give you an idea what the French and British fur-trappers were calling all Indian women, and I hope no one ever uses that term again.'' (From the program "Racism in 1992: Native Americans,'' as transcribed from a videotape by Jim Rementer at the request of a Delaware tribal member who knew from his knowledge of his own language that it was incorrect.)
It is as certain as any historical fact can be that the word squaw that the English settlers in Massachusetts used for "Indian woman'' in the early 1600s was adopted by them from the word squa that their Massachusett-speaking neighbors used in their own language to mean "female, younger woman,'' and not from Mohawk ojiskwa' "vagina,'' which has the wrong shape, the wrong meaning, and was used by people with whom they then had no contact. The resemblance that might be perceived between squaw and the last syllable of the Mohawk word is coincidental.
The above was a small snippet from the Smithsonian Institution: https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/94999/squaw%20article%20on%20web%20page.pdf
Good old Oprah used bullshit to make an inaccurate point about racism. Like she believed Meghan Markle's lies about being the victim of racist comments in the Royal houshold only to later admit she lied.
The 1964 Concise Oxford Dictionary didn't list squaw as offensive. The 1999 COD did. So the idea that 'squaw' might be offensive is relatively modern.
AJ
So the idea that 'squaw' might be offensive is relatively modern.
That's because it's only recently that political correctness and the like came about. Things that were offensive in the past are now being called out.
That's because it's only recently that political correctness and the like came about.
That's not entirely true - certain words in the 1964 COD have been marked as derogatory. I think nowadays some people go looking for potential offensiveness in a similar way to how insurance companies attribute risk by post/zip-code. So terms that are near-neighbours of offensive terms also get branded as offensive.
AJ
That's because it's only recently that political correctness and the like came about. Things that were offensive in the past are now being called out.
PC came to the forefront around 1987 with the publication of The Closing of the American Mind.
While SOME of what is allegedly offensive is, most of it is invented nonsense attempting to enforce specific viewpoints (cf Nineteen Eighty-Four and NewSpeak)
How many people are offended by "Black" or "Hispanic"? Making both of those words offensive was pushed by liberal agendas, not by the people they refer to. I have yet to hear from a Mexican that they prefer the term "LatinX". I know a lot since I live in Phoenix.
A Pew Research poll:
75% of Latinos who have heard of the term Latinx say it should not be used to describe the Hispanic or Latino population, up from 65% saying the same in 2019.
To a large part, that was an attempt to 'take back' their own history by actively adopting those most hateful, racist terms (ex: rappers continually referring to themselves as 'n*ggers').
I've observed it occurring across a number of fronts (gays vs fags, homos vs homosexuals and Queer culture. The idea is, by taking ownership of the insults, you take the power out of the derisive terms, making them your own.
Of course, it's had a very uneven success, as sometimes it works, often it doesn't, yet in time, any terms one generation (20-years) defines, the next utterly abandon for their own generations newest terms. And that trend has been going on for hundreds of years now.
Squaw backward might be walks. Wauqs, depends on how uq is pronounced. Maybe like a K. Maybe not.
In my personal understanding of the phrase... it refers to Lotus pose in yoga or approximations thereof, so clearly, the origin with the "dot" Indians.
The Asian Indians refer to it as sitting in the Lotus position, not sitting Indian style. The phrase started with the early American colonists referring to the cross legged way the American Indians sat.
The Asian Indians refer to it as sitting in the Lotus position, not sitting Indian style. The phrase started with the early American colonists referring to the cross legged way the American Indians sat.
Exactly. It is an English phrase - not one of the many Indian (either Indian) words that would have been used to describe that position. Both places used hundreds of different languages.
Therefore, it got the name because the English-speaking settlers were already familiar with the "dot" Indian manner of sitting.
As for the origin of actually physically sitting that way - I bet that goes back way further than the first North American inhabitants.
Technically, in a world without chairs, it's just more efficient, as it promotes a straighter spine, alleviating the normal daily wear of doing backbreaking work.
I think it is what is called the tailor's seat. Sitting on the floor with knees spread and feet crossed. Like the lotus position, but without locking your feet up on top of the other thighs.
Strange, as every tailor I've ever met tends to sit hunched over, peering intentently at the stitching in the materials they're working on living in Chicago and NYC, and having my clothes customer tailored to fit my particular frame (I have a 'gap' midway down my right-hand back which causes my suits to sag), I visited a LOT of different tailors.
This is what I was talking about.
https://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/threads/a-tailors-seat-is-this-still-the-way-tailors-work.200038/
Technically, 'Indian Style' refers to the position, not the racial origins of the term, thus it's mostly applied to anyone, sitting with their legs crossed under them, not just those doing yoga.
After all, in a cultural melting pot, everyone gets to share everyone else's culture, not always in equal measures, though sadly, now the main emphasis is in 'preserving white purity' at all costs, since that's such a cherished tradition by one and all.
You are so out of touch with modern thinking.
"Sharing everyone else's culture" is now Cultural Appropriation, and one of the worst things you can do.