Why did Europeans continue to call native Americans "Indians"?

Really? I never would've guessed.

Yes, often by large margins. Here's an article on the topic:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/fts/bismarck_200504A16.html

It's changing a lot now because there are so many ACTUAL Indians moving the the U.S.

Immigration from India hasn't done much to change the names American Indians call themselves. It may have affected the terms outsiders use to call them to some degree. But even then, people often use names like "East Indian," "South Asian" or "Asian Indian" to speak of someone from India.
 
Last edited:
I am not saying that it is offensive to call them "Indians" (in fact I would say that it is offensive to people from India to say that it is offensive to call someone "Indians"). What I say is that it is misleading to call them "Indians".

Sometimes it might be, but I think in the vast majority of cases it's going to be clear from context whether you're talking about the Americas or the Indian Subcontinent, and hence whether the "Indians" you refer to are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the New World or the citizens of the Republic of India.
 
Many names are etymologically misleading. White Americans are often called "Caucasian" even though very few have ancestors who originated from the Caucasus region.

Similarly, very few linguists or anthropologists think that the Semitic and Hamitic peoples all trace their descent back to two of Noah's sons.


ETA: Incidentally, I recall hearing that many of the inhabitants of northern Canada and Greenland prefer the term Eskimos to Inuit, which apparently is the name of just one Eskimo tribe. (Kind of like how Scots and Welshmen get annoyed when people call the UK "England", I should imagine.) Then again, this was on QI, so take it with a pinch of salt...
 
In the Scandinavian languages (and in German, I believe), there are different words for the two groups, "inder" for people from India and "indianer" for native Americans. Of course, the term "indianer" is still misleading (and actually sounds more like it has to do with India than the term "inder").

The English term "Amerindian" is a little better, although it still clearly is related to India.

I find it strange that they would prefer the term "Indian" to "native American". Why is that?

When I say that it is misleading I mean that it is wrong as it implies that they have ties to the Indian subcontinent.
 

Driftless

Donor
It's changing a lot now because there are so many ACTUAL Indians moving the the U.S.

When one of my daughters was talking about a new freind and said she was Indian, I asked if she was part of the nearby Ho-Chunk group, or she was part of the nearby Ojibwe group. My daughter replied that the young lady was from New Delhi....
 
From the article I linked above:

Moreover, a large number of Indians actually strongly object to the term Native American for political reasons. In his 1998 essay "I Am An American Indian, Not a Native American!", Russell Means, a Lakota activist and a founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM), stated unequivocally, "I abhor the term 'Native American.'" He continues:

It is a generic government term used to describe all the indigenous prisoners of the United States. These are the American Samoans, the Micronesians, the Aleuts, the original Hawaiians, and the erroneously termed Eskimos, who are actually Upiks and Inupiaqs. And, of course, the American Indian.

I prefer the term American Indian because I know its origins. ... As an added distinction the American Indian is the only ethnic group in the United States with the American before our ethnicity.

At an international conference of Indians from the Americas held in Geneva, Switzerland, at the United Nations in 1977 we unanimously decided we would go under the term American Indian. "We were enslaved as American Indians, we were colonized as American Indians, and we will gain our freedom as American Indians and then we can call ourselves anything we damn please."

In any event, keep in mind that they will generally refer to themselves first by their tribal name: Cherokee, Sioux, Ojibwe, etc. "Indian" is simply a name for the racial group as a whole.
 
Last edited:
Similarly, very few linguists or anthropologists think that the Semitic and Hamitic peoples all trace their descent back to two of Noah's sons.


ETA: Incidentally, I recall hearing that many of the inhabitants of northern Canada and Greenland prefer the term Eskimos to Inuit, which apparently is the name of just one Eskimo tribe. (Kind of like how Scots and Welshmen get annoyed when people call the UK "England", I should imagine.) Then again, this was on QI, so take it with a pinch of salt...

Sometimes you would also get different opinions among different individuals. For instance people who have traditionally been labelled "gypsies" often prefer the term "Roma". However, there are also those who prefer the term "gypsy". Obviously it is a bit difficult for outsiders when someone prefer one term, while others consider it insulting...
 
The only other obvious term beside "Indian" that Europeans would probably have used to refer to all inhabitants of the Americas are terms like "Americans", "Vespucciuans", "Columbians", "Novomundians" or something similar, since the 1000's of native nations in the new world probably had no collective word to denote "indigineous inhabitants of the new world" other than something like "people" and this would differ all native languages.

Regarding the continued use of the term "Indian" or "American Indian" in the USA, it has always seemed to me "Amerind" was a silly thing invented by white anthropologists and that "Native American" was a confusing neologism designed by white liberals in the 1960's to appeal to a relative minority of tribal members. I live in Oklahoma and deal professionally with American Indians on a regular basis, and these people almost invariably refer to themselves by reference to their Tribal membership. When they talk about indigenous people in the United States collectively, I most often hear "Indian People", "American Indians", and occasionally just "Native". To avoid confusing our "Indians" with with people from the Indian subcontinent, a lot of Americans I know say "East Indian" when talking about the people from India living in the US as opposed to the country.

I'd be interested to hear if the Canadian Term "First Nations" is actually what most native people in Canada use for themselves.
 
Last edited:
In German, we still use the word Indianer today to describe native Americans.

But the term has no negative connotation, unlike the use English term Indian for native Americans apparently has.
 
In German, we still use the word Indianer today to describe native Americans.

But the term has no negative connotation, unlike the use English term Indian for native Americans apparently has.
As has been said, Indian isn't really offensive in English, the complaints about that term revolve around it being geographically inaccurate and potentially confusing.
 
According to the book 1491 by Charles C. Mann, a lot of indigenous people, especially in Latin America seem to prefer "Indian". An indigenous Bolivian told the author something to this effect:

"Somos índios. Los americanos nativos viven solamente en los Estados Unidos."

English translation:

"We're Indians. Native Americans only live in the United States".


Basically, the name stuck everywhere to the point where even those misnamed by it still chose to use it.

It's not only that the name stuck out of inertia. It also becamr a political category in colonial times, and depending on the context it would be useful to get stuck in that label. I mean, the República de Indios was not too far from the batustans in many aspects, but still it granted autonomy (political and social) and rights and sometimes legal protection, specially to those groups that were not infortunate enough to inhabit areas of special economical interest. So I guess, a wild guess maybe, that this played a role.

Well the Apache word for themselves means 'people'. They're a fairly famous group. So let's use there's. What is it you ask? Inde! So the adjective attached would become Indean I guess. ;)

But seriously, we don't call Europeans Menschen or Asians Ren.

Well, I call germans "alemanes", from the alamani...if this counts

In the Scandinavian languages (and in German, I believe), there are different words for the two groups, "inder" for people from India and "indianer" for native Americans. Of course, the term "indianer" is still misleading (and actually sounds more like it has to do with India than the term "inder").

The English term "Amerindian" is a little better, although it still clearly is related to India.

I find it strange that they would prefer the term "Indian" to "native American". Why is that?

When I say that it is misleading I mean that it is wrong as it implies that they have ties to the Indian subcontinent.

In spanish we have the word "indio" which means indian exactly like in english (both for the subcontinent and the americas) and "indiano" which can refer to anything (people, art or whatever) coming from the iberoamerican colonies (that is, also from colonial times. It's not used generally for post-independency period) Since the word "indio" causes confussion, at least in Spain often people uses the term "hindú" for people from the subcontinent, so a mislead leading to another misleading term...


In spanish-speaking modern social-sciences the term "originary peoples" (pueblos originarios or poblaciones originarias) is often used. I dunno, at the end of the day what I see in this kind of debates is that we are a bunch of westerners discussing the best term to label and categorize other people without asking them their opinion(s) but ey, it's for their own good. And then I think that we have not changed that much since Columbus times...
 
Immigration from India hasn't done much to change the names American Indians call themselves. It may have affected the terms outsiders use to call them to some degree. But even then, people often use names like "East Indian," "South Asian" or "Asian Indian" to speak of someone from India.
It depends on the degree to which immigration occurs. There's ~3 million Indian Americans (~1%) to ~5 million Native Americans (so ~2%?). In Canada there's a bit more than 1.2 million Indo-Canadians (almost 4%) to about 700k First Nations (so, ~2%?) at about 1.4 million when you add Metis and Inuit (~4%). So in the US saying Indian is probably about twice as like to mean Natives, while in Canada it's about twice as like to mean someone from India.

ETA: Incidentally, I recall hearing that many of the inhabitants of northern Canada and Greenland prefer the term Eskimos to Inuit, which apparently is the name of just one Eskimo tribe. (Kind of like how Scots and Welshmen get annoyed when people call the UK "England", I should imagine.) Then again, this was on QI, so take it with a pinch of salt...
I've only seen it having been an Alaskan thing, because a fair number of non-Inuit groups were lumped in as 'Eskimo' (Aleuts and Yupiks). In Canada the term Eskimo is considered derogatory, but I don't think you'll start a fight or anything, probably just corrected.

I'd be interested to hear if the Canadian Term "First Nations" is actually what most native people in Canada use for themselves.
I have a fair number of Native friends back home, and I'm not totally sure any of them use the term Indian except if they're discussing something legal. The older generation uses both terms a bit more, but it's an odd event for someone my age or younger to mean Native when they say Indian in daily language. (Of course I can't probe my friends aren't weird.)
 
Top