Indian giver. Hmmmm. Certainly a racist remark, is it not? I believe it came about because we gave American Indians land...and then took it back.
Just ain't right.
Im not sure how it got started,i havent even thought of that phrase until i read this thread,its something we all used to call each other when we were little boy's.
Im gonne do a search on the origin of the phrase.
Lotsa hits but i likes this one best of the one's i read,it's also got a explaination of why Tonto called The Lone Ranger Kemosabe,kinda interesting stuff.
Posted 10/21/96
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They can have Manhattan back anytime they want it.
Dear Evan: What is the origin of the phrase "Indian giver"? When did it come about? Did it always imply that the giver was duplicitous? I can think of several alternate original meanings. For example, it could have been a white description of native North American potlatch ritualistic giving and receiving (albeit misunderstood), and in this sense, an evaluatively neutral description. Or, it could have been a pejorative referring to whites' practices of "giving" something to the Indians and then taking it back when the land became needed. Or, it could reflect and essentially neutral description of the whites' interpretation of native's unfamiliarity with the conventions of bourgeois private property, as imported from Europe and imposed on this continent. -- Dan Poor, New York City.
Y'know, I don't think I've ever received a question that contained the word "bourgeois" before. Reminds me of the day back in 1969 (oh boy, here he goes again), when a friend of mine decided to shave off his mustache because it was, in his words, a "bourgeois affectation." Yeah, right. This from someone who carried a tattered but utterly unread copy of "Being and Nothingness" everywhere he went for three solid years.
Surveying the various explanations for "Indian giver" you offer, I'd say the truth contains a bit of all three. The phrase dates back to the early 19th century and originally meant someone who gives a gift in the expectation of receiving something of greater value in return, which was indeed a custom among Indians that must have struck early European settlers as rather odd. Later on, the phrase came to mean a "false gift," as the adjective "Indian" itself took on the pejorative meaning of "false" or "mock," a sense also found in "Indian Summer" and "Indian corn." While it's true that the European settlers had a far worse reputation when it came to trustworthiness than the Indians did, the victors in history usually get to make up the idioms, so it's doubtful that "Indian giver" refers to the manner in which the settlers treated the Indians. It would be a quite a stretch to credit 19th century European settlers with the honesty to have recognized that they, and not the Indians, were the "Indian givers" in most cases.
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No Klingon ever called me Tonto.
Dear Mr. Morris: What, please, is the origin of Tonto's phrase "Kemo Sabay"? Thank you -- Eoin Bairéad, Dublin, Ireland
I must say that I really like everything about your question -- its brevity, the revelation that people in Ireland sit around watching The Lone Ranger, everything. Hi ho, as they say, Silver! But before we cut to the chase on the question of "kemosabe" (which is the usual spelling), allow me a short digression. While discussing your question with a friend of mine, I suddenly had a blinding revelation. My insight was that the Lone Ranger's faithful Indian companion Tonto, as played by Jay Silverheels in the TV series, was (ready for this?) the behavioral model for Mr. Spock on the original Star Trek series. Think about it -- am I right or am I right? Wow. I should teach courses in Television Theory.
Meanwhile, back at your question, there's been a bit of debate over the years as to what, if anything, "kemosabe" means, not to mention what language it is in the first place. According to the New York Public Library Book of Answers (Prentice Hall, 1990), what Tonto meant by "kemosabe" was "faithful friend." I don't know exactly where the NYPL got their information, but it always struck me that it was Tonto himself, not the Lone Ranger, who was the "faithful friend," having to save the Ranger's bacon nearly every week. Maybe if the Lone Ranger hadn't been wearing that silly mask he wouldn't have gotten himself into so many jams, eh? Seems to me that Tonto's job description usually boiled down to "untying knots."
The NYPL also notes that "kemosabe" is an actual word in two Native American languages. In Apache, it means "white shirt." Who knows -- maybe Tonto also had to do the Ranger's laundry and was actually constantly reminding him to avoid grass stains. In Navajo, on the other hand, "kemosabe" translates as "soggy shrub." If this seems an odd thing for faithful friend Tonto to call the Lone Ranger, perhaps he was just repaying the Ranger's long-standing insult. "Tonto," after all, is a Spanish word meaning "stupid."
