Squaw

Squaw is an English language loan-word, used as a noun or adjective, derived from the eastern Algonquian morpheme meaning 'woman' that appears in numerous Algonquian languages and is variously transcribed in English as "squa", "skwa", "esqua", "sqeh", "skwe", "que", "kwa", "ikwe", "exkwew", "xkwe", and a number of other variants. Someindigenous North Americans consider the term to be offensive.

The words for "woman" in the various Algonquian languages derive from Proto-Algonquian *[eθkweːwa]. In the daughter languages, the first consonant sound has variously changed to /s/ (Narragansett squaw, Cree iskwēw), /x/ (Lenape xkwē < əxkwew), or been lost (Shawnee ekwēwa, Ojibwe ikwe). The pronunciation squaw or skwa is found in the northerly Eastern Algonquian languages in New England and Quebec.

One of its earliest appearances in print is "the squa sachim, or Massachusets queen" in Mourt's Relation (1622), one of the first chronicles of the Plymouth colony (Goddard 1997). William Wood similarly defined "Squaw - a woman" in his list, "A Small Nomenclature of the Indian Language," in New England's Prospect (Wood 1637). Roger Williams, founder of the Rhode Island colony, in his book A Key Into the Language of America (1643), published several words that exemplify the use of this morpheme in the Narragansett language:

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