Volume 12 Number 3
May 1973

United Press International

IN ONE respect at least the American Indian is beginning to get deserved recognition—as the source for countless words in our daily language.

"The contribution of the American Indian to the English language is something that is often overlooked," according to Dr. H. Bosley Woolf, editorial director for G. & C. Merriam, publishers of Merriam Webster dictionaries. "Like so much about his culture, it is passed over in favor of dramatizing the sometimes violent aspects of his past.

"A number of motion pictures and books have perpetuated the myth that the Indians encountered by the first settlers were little more than monosyllabic. Nothing could be further from the truth.

"The fact is that for a variety of words now in the English language, the American Indian said it first."

The words range from such common English words as "skunk," "raccoon" "moose," "quahog," and "mackinaw" to literally thousands of place names: "Chicago," "Tallahassee," "Cheyenne," "Hackensack," "Keokuk," "Rockaway" and many others.

Historians point out that the first settlers on American shores discovered many things they had never seen before and which appeared nowhere else in the world. To make it easy on themselves, they simply adopted the Indian name for it: thus "hickory," "pecan," "terrapin," "toboggan," "succotash," "woodchuck," "hominy," "squash" and many other words passed into our language.

To get the English words for an Indian object, the settlers simply spelled out as best they could in English their impression of Indian sounds. Understandably there were often various spellings. An early spelling for skunk was "squuncke," a persimmon was first spelled "putchamins" and the Niagara was the "Ongniaahra."

Although the New England settlers were among the first to hear the new words, it was Captain John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, who was one of the first to introduce some of the words to European readers. He used them in descriptions of the first Virginia settlements and of his voyages along the Atlantic coast. Through Captain Smith, Europe first read of the "muskrat," the "persimmon," the "oppossum," the "tomahawk" and "moccasin."

One political word widely used today, "caucus," appeared in several of the Indian languages, according to Webster’s Third, "corcas" of Algonquin origin, or "caucauasu," meaning an elder or counselor.

Two of the more colorful English words to come from the Indian are "hooch" and "Podunk." "Hooch" goes back to Alaska of 1867. There the Hoochinoo Indians made a liquor dubbed "hoochinoo" or "hoch" by American soldiers sent there when Alaska was sold to the U.S. by Russia. "Podunk," Webster’s Third notes, was an Indian name for a town in Massachusetts and a territory in Connecticut. The word is now defined by Webster’s as "a small, unimportant and isolated town."

The island of Manhattan undoubtedly took its name from the Manhattan Indians who lived there, although the fable persists that "Manhattan" means "the place of the first big drink" because Henry Hudson fed some alcohol to an Indian who then rushed home to tell his friends.

Merriam linguists note that the Spanish explorers took a number of words from the Nahuatl in Mexico: "chili," "chocolate," "tomato," "avocado," "ocelot," "coyote," to name a few.