Of the word, redskin ... In 2005, the Indian language scholar Ives Goddard of the Smithsonian Institution published a remarkable and consequential study of redskins early history. His findings shifted the dates for the words first appearance in print by more than a century and shed an awkward light on the contemporary debate. Goddard found, in summary, that the actual origin of the word is entirely benign. Goddards paper methodically describes the terms early evolution, made possible by an unlikely abundance of documentation. It is extremely unusual, he wrote, to be able to document the emergence of a vernacular expression in such exact and elucidative detail. A major source for confusion has been Suzan Harjo, the Cheyenne-Creek activist who was an early plaintiff in the long-running case against the NFL. She has said on numerous occasions that redskin originated in the practice of presenting bloody red skins and scalps as proof of Indian kill for bounty payments. Years later, the Washington Post published a column by Eva Rodriguez, trotting out the bloody-scalp origin story. Goddard responded by writing a letter to the editor, objecting strenuously to Rodriguezs amateur scholarship: What is not acceptable is for her to give as the only relevant historical fact the fictional claim that the word originally referred to scalps, for which there is no evidence. But the Posts letters editor would not allow Goddard to call the bloody-scalp claim fictional, and so deleted the word from his letter.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 14:35:33 +0000
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