1842 lithograph of an Ojibwe (Chippewa) woman and child titled: “Chippeway Squaw & Child.” Image of a kneeling Ojibwe woman offering her breast to a child in a papoose carrier.
3 January 2022
In English usage squaw is a pejorative and harmful term for an Indigenous woman of North America. In Algonquian languages, it is a neutral term, but in English squaw has a misogynist and racist connotation and is best avoided, especially by non-Indigenous speakers. It was first borrowed into English from the Massachusett squa, meaning a young, unmarried woman, but it has cognates in other Algonquian languages, where the root has the more general meaning of woman.
Squaw first appears in English writing in William Bradford’s 1622 account of the initial years of the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts in a description of the meeting with the chief of the local, Indigenous community:
The Sachim, or Gouernour of this place, is called Obbatinewat, and though he liue in the bottome of the Massachuset bay, yet he is vnder Massasoyt. He vsed vs very kindly, he told vs, he durst not then remaine in any setled place, for feare of the Terentines. Also the Squa Sachim, or Massachusets Queene was an enemy to him.
We told him of diuers Sachims that had acknowledged themselues to be King IAMES his men, and if he also would submit himselfe, we would be his safegard from his enemies; which he did, and went along with vs to bring vs to the Squa Sachim.
John Winthrop also uses it in his journal entry for 23 March 1631:
Chickatabot came with his Sanopps & squaes, & presented the Gouernor with a [hogshead] of Indian Corne. after they had all dined & had eache a small cuppe of sacke & beades & the men tabacko: he sent awaye all his men and women (thoughe the Gouernor would have stayed them in regard of the rayne & thunder) himselfe and one squa and one Sanoppe, stayed all night, & beinge in English Clothes, the Gouernor sett him at his owne table, where he behaved him selfe as soberly &c: as an Englishe man.
Chickabot was the sagamore (i.e., chief) of the Massachusett Indians living south of Boston. A sanopp is a married man or warrior. The manuscript is difficult to read, and James Savage’s nineteenth-century transcription of the journal records the word beades as beer.
But by the mid nineteenth century, squaw was being used in English as a term of abuse. For example, there is this in John Beauchamp Jones’s 1849 Wild Western Scenes where the word is used to refer to an Indigenous woman, and then the word is taken back because she is young and beautiful:
“Why, hang it all! Was there nothing running after me but this squaw?” asked Joe, who had ventured forth again unobserved, and now stood beside Glenn and Mary.
“Silence!” said Glenn.
“Oh, don’t call her a squaw, Joe—she’s more like an angel than a squaw,” said Mary, gazing tenderly at the lovers while tears were yet standing in her eyes.
“I won’t do so again,” said Joe, “because she’s the prettiest wild thing I ever saw; and if Mr. William don’t marry her, I will.”
The word has also been used to refer to an effeminate man, especially in Indigenous contexts. For example, there is this from Zebulon Pike’s account of his first expedition into the American West. The entry is from 14 September 1805; it was published in 1810:
Met the remainder of the war party (before noted) of the Sacs and Reynards, returning from their expedition against the Sauteurs. I directed my interpreter to ask how many scalps they had taken, they replied “none;” he added they were all squaws, for which I reprimanded him.
So, if you’re tempted to use the word, you probably shouldn’t.
Sources:
Bradford, William. A Relation or Iournall of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Setled at Plimoth in New England. London: J. Dawson for John Bellamie, 1622, 57–58. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. squaw, n.
Jones, John Beauchamp [Luke Shortfield, pseud.]. Wild Western Scenes. Philadelphia: Grigg, Elliot, 1849, 237. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2019, modified June 2021, s.v. squaw, n.
Pike, Zebulon M. An Account of the Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi. Philadelphia: C. & A. Conrad, et al., 1810, 19–20. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Winthrop, John. The Journal of John Winthrop 1630–1649. Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1996, 47.
Winthrop, John. A Journal of the Transactions and Occurrences in the Settlement of Massachusetts and the Other New-England Colonies. Hartford: Elisha Babcock, 1790, 24. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Image credit: Charles Bird King, 1842; Lehman and Duval, lithographers. DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University. Public domain image.