4 ms·
I need to read up on why the "Indians" tag remained and persisted for centuries considering it must have not taken very long for Christopher Columbus to realize
by ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago
I need to read up on why the "Indians" tag remained and persisted for centuries considering it must have not taken very long for Christopher Columbus to realize he was not in India after all. Certainly subsequent arrivals from Europe would have known it wasn't India so why did they all keep calling them that.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- infodroid 10y agoBuilding on this point, I think it feels wrong to use the unqualified Indians as opposed to American Indians to refer to Native Americans. Clearly the people of India are the default referent. So it is surprising to see the more confusing usage in a TLS headline.
- benbreen 10y agoIn the past 10 years or so academic historians have switched back to using 'Indian' again.[1] For the most part, I'm told, simply because it's useful (from the perspective of prose style) to have a shorter synonym for 'Native Americans' to pull out once in awhile. But also because some indigenous groups have argued for re-appropriating the term 'Indian.' I agree that it's confusing. [1] One example from an academic whose background is Shoshone: Ned Blackhawk, Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West (2006)
- gnipgnip 10y ago:) https://youtu.be/5YBwDNfOaxU?t=16s https://youtu.be/5YBwDNfOaxU?t=16s
- ajeet_dhaliwal 10y agoHumorous explanation of the original reason but the persistence of it over such a long time period still baffles me.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago> Certainly subsequent arrivals from Europe would have known it wasn't India I'm not sure that all that many of the Europeans would have cared about the Native Americans for anything beyond slave labor or as an obstacle.