Lyn,
This stuff drives us crazy. A simple look in any reputable dictionary
will answer the question. Squaw is from Massachusset (unlike the state the
name of the language has no final "s"). It is the ordinary word for woman
and it comes to mean "Indian woman" in English and the negative connotations
following from that meaning. It isn't Iroquois and it doesn't refer to
genitalia. It made it's way into the regular vocabulary of English in the
early 1800's. It seems to be one of those words for objects in nature
(sorry, but that's the way Indians get classified in the white mind) that
shows up in the names of other objects in nature, squaw bush, squaw huckleberry,
and squaw fish. Such names are rarely classificatory serving more to
differentiate than to describe. Biologists should stick to biology and
leave onomastics to the experts.
The End.
lyn
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"We did not weave the web of life. We | Lyn Dearborn; Naturalist/Person
are merely a strand in it. Whatever | Turtle Clan Ojibwe
we do to the web, we do to ourselves" | dearborn@anchor.esd.sgi.com
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