Native Americans are called Indians because
Christopher Columbus mistakenly thought he
had arrived in India. I don’t buy that. Had
he never visited India? Did he not notice
any difference in the people? I read somewhere that the term came from a term that he used to describe the inhabitants of the new world, “In Dios”, meaning (I think) “with God”. This was in reference to their innocent and childlike demeanor. I guess that has some validity. My own guess was that the actual basis of the word was something like “indigenous”. What’s the truth, Master? Can you help this 1/32 Choctaw?
Columbus under-estimated the size of the world. He did indeed believe he would discover a trans-atlantic route to India.
At least that’s what they taught us in grade school.
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Columbus never visited India, so he had no idea what the natives looked like.
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The area Columbus discovered is still called “The West Indies.” The “west” implies that he thought it was identical with the “East Indies” i.e., India.
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Columbus insisted until the day he died that he had found India.
I don’t know of any source that suggests anything other than Columbus thought he was finding natives of India. The “in dios” sounds like an urban legend.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman
Columbus under-estimated the size of the world. He did indeed believe he would discover a trans-atlantic route to India.
At least that’s what they taught us in grade school.
Columbus never visited India, and would not recognize someone from India if they came up and bit him on the ass. Columbus experience was with the western Mediterranian and the Atlantic. He was perfectly right about the direction, had a tremendous understanding of the winds and sea, but boy, did he screw up on the math when estimating the circumference of the earth. He really did think he found islands off the coast of India, which the Spanish took to calling “the Indies,” and the rest of Europe more or less adopted that usage. It took a few years and many more voyages for eveyone to figure it out, but by then the name “Indian” had become generic for the native people. I think that “Indian,” while inappropriate, must have been the pc or polite terminology. If you ever read the diaries and histories of the people of the time, they would never think of using something as erudite or polite as “indigenous.” My uncle is a Native American and the last name given his family centuries ago still has an echo to it - “Savage”
“The Indies” or “India” was synonomous with “Asia” back then. Note that the East Indies (Indonesia) is thousands of miles from the Indian sub-continent. As a race, Native Americans are technically Asian, (is “mongoloid” still used? I hope not.), so it could be argued (not by me) that the “Indian” label isn’t too far off the mark. I believe many Micronesians, Polynesians, and indigenous Filipinos have also been referred to as indians at various points in history.
Elmer J. Fudd,
Millionaire.
I own a mansion and a yacht.
IIRC, “India,” “Indus” (as in Indus River, and “Hindu” all have common origins in an old word for “river,” probably the “Indus River,” which makes it a redundant term.
I don’t know that India ever referred to itself as India. I was under the impression that the Greeks gave it that name.
So, in either case (East or West), “Indian” was a name that someone else gave to them.
A couple of minor quibbles with posts so far:
Columbus didn’t think he had reached what we now call India. He did think he had reached the islands that lie to the SE of India, known at the time as the “Indies”.
Columbus didn’t screw up in his math. He relied on estimates made much earlier, which used principles of trigonometry to deduce the circumference of the globe. IIRC, the estimates were incorrect because one of the sides to the triangle was poorly estimated as to distance. Columbus actually expected to hit the Indies sooner than he actually found the Western Hemisphere.
jwg, your uncle wouldn’t be a doctor, would he?
The Coyote gnaws …
but he does not swallow.
Peyote Coyote
Nope, he is a retired NYC cop.
That was a joke, son! ('bout as sharp as a bag of wet mice.)
P. Coyote should have asked if he had rooms in the Empire State Building.
Elmer J. Fudd,
Millionaire.
I own a mansion and a yacht.
So, Columbus thought he had discovered the West Indies, therefore, the natives were called Indians. One man’s mistake forever labels an entire race of people. Doesn’t make sense to me. The thing is, it wasn’t that long before everyone knew that this was a new world. Amerigo Vespucci had pretty much convinced everyone by 1500. In 1507, the new world was even given its own name, America, in honor of Vespucci. Seems to me that everybody’s taking the easy way out on this. Tell me this. Is the word “Indian” a translation of the Portugese or Spanish, or is it the word as it would actually have been spoken by Columbus?
I got lost once when I was going to Milwaukee and ended up in Muskegon. I stopped at a Burger King to find out where I was. I asked the girl at the counter to tell me where I was and to say it real slow. She looked at me and said, “Bur–Ger—King”. I’m thinking of renaming the town.
A people’s name for itself is often not the name it is called by outsiders.
This has been covered a number of times, and it applies to both “Indians” and “Injuns.”
Thank you, breaux, great tale!
Oh, I’m gonna keep using these #%@&* codes 'til I get 'em right.
As with many things, “Indian” is an English word derived to describe those from India or the Indies. As you probably assume, each language has different ways of denoting the inhabitants of an land. English often uses the inflected ending of -n (American, Panamanian, etc.) Spanish has a different method, which would have been used by the Spanish. One should note that Cristoforo Columbo was Italian, and had been to the Portuguese court before trying Ferdinand and Isabella, so he likely spoke at least three languages and one has to question the idea that he routinely spoke Spanish.
Sometimes the simple explanations are the right ones.
Look at it this way…
Would you rather have them called Columboids or something?
Most American Indians I have met prefer to be called Indians to Native Americans because, as many have rightfully pointed out, the only NATIVE Americans aren’t human. Everybody emigrated here at some point in history. It just so happens that they were here first.
He didn’t make the mistake personally, but a far more correct figure was already known at the time. He also overestimated the distance from Europe to India in the other direction (thus underestimating the distance going the other way); that was more excusable, as longitude was very difficult to determine in his days. He seems to have picked out the very lowest figure for the size of the world that he could find anywhere, and the very highest figure for the eastward distance.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
Remember that Columbus had a strong economic incentive to push the idea that he had made it around the world. He probably believed that he had, whether the math agreed or not. If he had any doubts though, I’m sure he wasn’t going to go back to Ferd and Liza and say, “Well, I didn’t exactly get to CHina like I said I would, but…”
If he had gone by some estimates of the size of the earth available at the time (Ptolemy, et. al) he would have been trying to go from Europe to Japan (Chipangu), China (Cathay), India or Sri Lanka (Taprobane), non-stop, assuming no America in the way. Nobody would have funded that voyage. He was hopeful the lesser figures were correct, and thanks for the fact that there was a continenet in the way tht even Ptolemy had not predicted - he lucked out.
The term “Indian” is from “Indio” the Spanish, and is attested in numerous sources, namely De Las Casas.
Indio. Hmmm. I feel like I’m getting closer. Now if I can get the root for Indio, or a literal translation. Is Indio a reference to the Indies, or is it a descriptive word? In my original post I said that I had read that the word “Indian” came from “In Dios”. It now sounds like it may have been one word, “Indios”, rather than two words.
I appreciate the responses. Egad. What a brain trust.
There is no way columbus could have made drawn a paralell between native americans and east indians because in 1492 india was not called India, it was called Hindustan. If you really want the down low, consult George Carlin’s book titled “Brain Droppings.”
Now is the time for all good men to come the the aid of their gazorninplatt.