For ages, before white people got to it, squaw wasn't a problematic word. It didn't refer to or have anything to do with copulation or defecation, for instance, the two things most likely to spawn euphemism as well as insult. It doesn't appear to have been a charged word.
According to my exhaustive* research, squaw can be traced back to a Proto-Algonquian word, *eθkweːwa (something like "ethkwaywa"), which meant woman. This developed into various forms in Proto-Algonquian's daughter languages, for instance iskwēw (Cree), xkwē (Lanape), ekwēwa (Shawnee), and ikwe (Ojibwe). And in Massachusett, the language the Europeans first made contact with in that part of the world, the cognate was squa. Oh, let's just go ahead and spell it squaw. This was first put into print in the early 1600s and was said to mean woman.
In time, when used by white people, squaw came to belong to a category of words we tend to find offensive—words that name female members of racial or ethnic groups. Because words like these—like negress and Jewess—are used within contexts of bigotry, misogyny, and racial hatred, they're all suspect, and they've fallen from favor. They now sound not only offensive but also archaic. They are dehumanizing, almost... zoological. It's hard to imagine even the most racist racist using them with a straight face, although I bet there are plenty who are game to try. In light of that, it's unsurprising that squaw would come to be offensive, even if it started life innocuously.
All of which makes me wish people argued against the word on those grounds. The case against squaw doesn't sound hard to make: it belongs to the category of racially defined gendered terms we have largely rejected, and I'm sure it had acquired an unsavory history as a racist, sexist slur. Instead, the arguments for ditching the word seem to involve falsehoods about the word's origins, and that's the part of the story that bugs me.
Apparently, squaw's humble beginnings were unremarkable until 1973, when Literature of the American Indian introduced the idea that the word is actually derived from the Mohawk word ojiskwa (or something like that), meaning vagina. Then, in 1992, a Native American activist told Oprah (!) that the word was Algonquian for vagina. The problem is that Mohawk isn't an Algonquian language. It's Iroquois. Algonquian and Iroquois are completely separate language families. (Picture Russian and Turkish and you'll see two languages from similarly different language families.) And the white people who first heard and recorded squaw were in contact with speakers of Algonquian languages. And still, if you ignore all that, all you're left with is... a coincidence. Two words in wholly different languages with similarish shapes and related meanings. That's not much to build a case on. It's not even circumstantial evidence. False friends, as they're called, are surprisingly common. Words that look alike don't always have a common origin.
(You can pick any two languages and easily find loads of words that sound kind of similar and mean kind of similar things, even when the two languages have no historical or "genetic" connection. Let's do an experiment. I'm going to pick two languages from a list. Hang on. OK. Basque. That's interesting. Basque is an isolate, meaning it's not known to be related to any other language. To go with that, I picked Bengali, an Indo-European language spoken far away from Spain. You wouldn't expect to find many similarities, except for "cultural" terms like, say, telephone or taxi. So, after a few minutes with Google translate—of course this isn't authoritative; it's Google translate—I found a pair of false friends: Basque txakur and Bengali kukura, both meaning dog. Boy, is this case ever closed! A smashing success! Drinks for everyone!)
Regardless, this argument—that squaw is a crude, sexualized slur—is now so widely believed that it has taken on the kind of truth that only articles of faith enjoy. Regardless of its actual falseness, it has become true enough to render the word taboo. And so now, it has to go.
It reminds me of the controversy around "the other n-word" when it was used by an aide to the mayor of Washington, DC, in 1999.
As far as I can tell, the mayor's aide was guilty only of having a tin ear. True, the word he used has no racist pedigree, but how could anyone use it and not immediately hear within it a word that, to many of us, is unspeakable? The word niggardly—I have to admit that I'm uncomfortable even typing it—has been contaminated. You can mourn that, as the future-fearing language prigs usually do when word meanings shift and languages rub up against changing cultures. But it's not like we don't have other, perfectly serviceable words at our disposal for meeting the same purpose, ranging from the blunt to the flowery: cheap, stingy, tightfisted, miserly, penny-pinching, parsimonious, and penurious, to name only a few. I want to make sure this is very clear. I assume most English speakers don't even know this term. But, apart from the way the word sounds, it has nothing to do with that famous racist slur. The similarity is nothing but coincidence.
(In researching this piece, I found a Wikipedia article about the DC mayor's aide's use of the word—and many other peoples', too. Apparently, there was something in the air, and the word was thrown around—and objected to—like never before.)
No one will miss the other n-word. As rare as it was, it didn't even bring its own nuance to the table. Or, at least, none I'm aware of. Although it's an innocent bystander, lexical collateral damage, guilty only by association, I still say good riddance.
*I mean not exhaustive.
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