"Indian giver" is a pejorative expression used to describe a person who gives a "gift" and later wants it back or who expects something of equivalent worth in return for the item. [1] It is based on cultural misunderstandings that took place between the early European colonists and the Indigenous people with whom they traded. [2] Often, the Europeans viewed an exchange of items as gifts and believed that they owed nothing in return to the Indigenous people. On the other hand, the Indigenous people saw the exchange as a form of trade or equal exchange and so they had differing expectations of their guests. [2]
The phrase is used to describe a negative act or shady business dealings. It is considered disrespectful, and its use is offensive [3] to many Indigenous people.
The phrase originated, according to the researcher David Wilton, in a cultural misunderstanding that arose when European settlers first encountered Native Americans after the former had arrived in North America in the 15th century. The Europeans thought that they were receiving gifts from Native Americans, but the Native Americans believed that they were engaging in what was known to Europeans as bartering. That resulted in the Native Americans finding European behaviour ungenerous and insulting. [4]
The phrase was first noted in 1765 by Thomas Hutchinson, who characterized an Indian gift as "a present for which an equivalent return is expected," [2] [5] which suggests that the phrase originally referred to a simple exchange of gifts. In 1860, however, in John Russell Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms, Bartlett said that the phrase was being used by children in New York to mean "one who gives a present and then takes it back." [6]
In 1969, American bubblegum pop band 1910 Fruitgum Company published the album Indian Giver . The titular song peaked at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #1 in Canada.
As recently as 1979, the phrase was used in mainstream media publications, [7] but in the 1997 book The Color of Words: An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Ethnic Bias in the United States, the writer and editor Philip H. Herbst says that although the phrase is often used innocently by children, it may be interpreted as offensive, [8] and The Copyeditor's Handbook (1999) describes it as objectionable. [9]
Author David Wilton argues in his 2004 book Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends that the concept of an "Indian gift" arose when white settlers misinterpreted the Native American concept of bartering:
"To an Indian, the giving of gifts was an extension of this system of trade and a gift was expected to be reciprocated with something of equal value. Europeans, upon encountering this practice, misunderstood it, considering it uncouth and impolite. To them, trade was conducted with money and gifts were freely given with nothing expected in return. So this native practice got a bad reputation among the white colonists of North America and the term eventually became a playground insult."
The Native American Trade refers to the historic trade between the Indigenous people of North America, First Nations in Canada, and European settlers. The period begins before the colonial period, continuing through the 19th century and declining around 1937.
A gift economy or gift culture is a system of exchange where valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. Social norms and customs govern giving a gift in a gift culture; although there is some expectation of reciprocity, gifts are not given in an explicit exchange of goods or services for money, or some other commodity or service. This contrasts with a barter economy or a market economy, where goods and services are primarily explicitly exchanged for value received.
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Wampum is a traditional shell bead of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of Native Americans. It includes white shell beads hand-fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell and white and purple beads made from the quahog or Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clam.
Economic anthropology is a field that attempts to explain human economic behavior in its widest historic, geographic and cultural scope. It is an amalgamation of economics and anthropology. It is practiced by anthropologists and has a complex relationship with the discipline of economics, of which it is highly critical. Its origins as a sub-field of anthropology began with work by the Polish founder of anthropology Bronislaw Malinowski and the French Marcel Mauss on the nature of reciprocity as an alternative to market exchange. For the most part, studies in economic anthropology focus on exchange.
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Sambo is a derogatory label for a person of African descent in the Spanish language. Historically, it is a name in American English derived from a Spanish term for a person of African and Native American ancestry. After the Civil War, during and after the Jim Crow era the term was used in conversation, print advertising and household items as a pejorative descriptor for black people. The term is now considered offensive in American and British English.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)An Indian gift is a proverbial expression, signifying a present for which an equivalent return is expected
The OED's earliest citation for "Indian giver" is John Russell Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms (1860): "Indian giver. When an Indian gives any thing, he expects to receive an equivalent, or to have his gift returned."