Redskin (slang)

"Redskin" is a slang term referring to Native Americans in the United States. In modern dictionaries of American English it is labeled "usually offensive", "disparaging", "insulting", or "taboo".

The origin of the term is debated, in particular whether the use of "red" referred to skin color or the use of pigments by certain tribes, and also whether the term was applied to natives by Europeans or came from language natives used to refer to themselves. Whatever its origins in the colonial period, many argue that "redskin" underwent a process of due to the increasingly disparaging use of the term through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Use of the term is connected to the history of bounties being paid for Indian scalps.

Although the term has almost disappeared from common use, it remains as the name of many sports teams, most prominently the Washington Redskins, and the term's meaning has been a significant point of controversy. That controversy has led to many high schools in the United States changing their team name. While 28 schools changed during the 25 years prior to 2013, an additional eleven changed between 2013 and 2016 as a result of protest by Native Americans, government action, or voluntary action.

The origin of the term "redskin" in English is debated. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) had cited its earliest use in a 1699 letter from an English colonialist, Samuel Smith, living in Hadley, Massachusetts, which supposedly contains the following passage: "Ye firste Meetinge House was solid mayde to withstande ye wicked onsaults of ye Red Skins." Based on this source, the OED suggests the term was specifically applied to the Delaware Indians and "referred not to the natural skin color of the Delaware, but to their use of vermilion face paint and body paint."Smithsonian linguistics scholar Ives Goddard concluded the letter was a "work of fiction", saying that the "language was Hollywood [...] It didn't look like the way people really wrote." The OED agreed with Goddard's findings, stating that the quotation was "subsequently found to be misattributed; the actual text was written in 1900 by an author claiming, for purposes of historical fiction, to be quoting an earlier letter."

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