“Excuse me! Can I ask you a question?” the black 40-ish year old man said with a cell phone in his right hand as I walked out of Samosa House in Venice. It was closing time, and I had run in to grab a late night meal. He had been hitting on me earlier when I had first walked to the counter – he said he liked my red heels and dress, asked if I worked in an office, wondered what Indian food he should order. I had responded nicely yet curtly, and he had disappeared as I ordered my food to go. It seemed like he hadn’t ventured far, and was on the phone hovering around the entrance.
“Sure…” I responded hesitantly. The old me would have brushed him off, but I’ve been trying to be nicer this past year.
“Back when I lived in D.C. I always wondered this,” he answered deadpan, phone still open in hand. He didn’t hang up on his call. “What is the difference between Indian and Cherokee Indian?”
I looked at him to see if he was kidding. His expression was not kidding. “Well… uh…” I hesitated. “Cherokee Indians are indigenous to here, to America. And Indians … are from India.” I looked at him and he still looked confused. “You know India? As in the country around the world? On Asia, the continent?”
“Then why are they both called ‘Indian’?”
I bit my lip as I tried to figure out how to best answer his questions. Could he really not know the difference? Slowly, I said, “Well, when Christopher Columbus landed in America, he saw brown people and thought he had landed in India instead. He called the brown people he saw Indian. So it was an accident.”
“Brown people? Christopher Columbus?”
“Look. I’m late. My food is getting cold. I have to go.” I walked quickly to my car shaking my head exasperatedly, hoping he wasn’t following. I realized that there was no point in breaking it down for a man that needed 4th grade educating. And try as I might to be nice to every guy that approaches me… there’s a point where you just have to walk away.
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“You know, that’s a myth,” a friend said when I recounted the story to him. He was an activist for the indigenous community, and if anyone should know, I figured it would be him. “The word India wasn’t even around back in 1492. Research shows that the term Indian comes from when Columbus landed he referred to them as ‘una geste in Dios’ or in other words ‘a people of God.'”
Really? Could I have told the told the man at the Samosa House wrong? I did a little digging. First question, what was India called in 1492?
The name, derived from the Indus River (from Sanskrit sindhu, “a river”), goes back to antiquity. Alexander the Great referred to the Indus (Indos), and to the region’s inhabitants as Indikoi, as early as the third century B.C. The name passed from Greek into Latin and thence into other European languages, the earliest citation in English being in 893 A.D. by King Alfred the Great. At the time of Columbus’s voyage, “India” or “the Indias/Indies” was often used to refer to all of south and east Asia. Columbus carried with him a passport from Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, written in Latin and dispatching him “toward the regions of India” (ab partes Indie) on their behalf. Martin Beheim‘s globe of 1492, which predated the voyage, clearly labels the region as “Indie.” “Hindustan,” also derived from the Indus River, is a much later term, not appearing in English until 1665. In any case, in Spanish that name is not Hindustan but Indostan.[straightdope]
So India was called India or something similar in 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Wiki even has a list of names for India pre-1500s. So that part is plausible. Second question then is, what did Columbus write home about the indigenous community?
[Columbus] wrote a letter, in Spanish, detailing his discoveries while off the Azores during his homeward voyage…The original manuscript has not survived, but a printed copy made shortly after its receipt has. In the first paragraph Columbus says “In 33 days I passed from the Canary Islands to the Indies” (en 33 dÃas pasé de las islas de Canaria a las Indias). His first reference to the inhabitants comes in the second paragraph: “To the first [island] which I found I gave the name San Salvador . . . the Indians call it GuanahanÔ (A la primera que yo hallé puse nombre San Salvador . . . los Indios la llaman GuanahanÃ). In all he makes six references to India or the Indies, and four to Indios. Nowhere in the letter does he use a phrase resembling una gente in Dios. [straightdope]
So, I was right when I told the guy that hit on me that Columbus called Native Americans Indians because he had thought he had landed in India. Myth demystified. If anyone ever hits on me with that line again, I know exactly how to answer now. And I’ll have the link to the original letter (English, Latin, and Spanish) to prove it.
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I’m interested in hearing (…ok, reading in the comments) the pick-up lines that our Sepia Mutiny readers have received over the years. Not the generic pick up lines, but those that involved some intersection of racialization absurdity such as the one I narrated above. For instance, last summer at the Santa Monica Pier, this black guy walked by and said, “You Indian? Indian is close to nigger…” and this other time at a mall in Virgina a posse of teenage boys said, “Let be your Osama, baby.” Ladies, I want to hear your stories. What words have been used on you?
That one sure had a happy ending!
Sometimes they are people like these.
That link was funny, blackmallu. The only one I did not get was the one about peeing in the sink. More appropriately it would be peeing in the shower.
The peeing in the sink is a standing joke on that site, and refers to this thread.
“and does anyone else think Christopher Columbus was a dumbass for thinking he landed in India back then? I’m sorry, how the hell can anyone mistake Indians for Native Americans? (no, I’m not knocking Native Americans here)”
I think there were political and cultural reasons for Columbus promoting the “India” landing. A lot of Europeans knew about the land mass we now call North America. The Scandinavians had fishing colonies in Nova Scotia; certain secret societies were using it to stash treasures they didn’t want confiscated (though this is controversial); Irish monks drew maps of it and had place names in common with native American place names; lately they’ve been promoting the possible visit of a Chinese mariner; the ancient Phoenicians were here. As one maverick student of history commented: all and sundry over here before Columbus. Somehow though the Columbus landing held.
If he did mistake natives for Indians, it could be that Indians varied a lot in physical appearance. They didn’t all have the markedly eastern Asian look of the plains Indians. The Indian laides of Virginia were described as having similar looks to English women except for the darker color of the skin. The “Indians” living on the east coast of North America had a different sort of phenotype from those familiar to us in picture of Plains Indians. Europeans noted this as they came into contact with native Americans further west. This has been written about but I can’t find any sources now–it’s a hard subject to find keywords to google. Since there haven’t been any full-blood east coast indians for a couple hundred years, this has sort of fallen into the realm of legend. However, it may explain why some of the natives were mistaken for Indians, if indeed they ever really were.
As far as I know everything but the Scandanavian colony is unsubstantiated myth. The visit of the Chinese mariner story, especially, is almost certainly BS.
If you look up “Melungeon” then you will come across data regarding the possibility that some Turks, Portugese and East Indians were amongst the first to reach North American shores and settle in the Apalachin region, mixing with the native Indians and Europeans. The present day Melungeon descendents live in the poorest regions of Tennessee and are hillbillies but are distinquished under the title of “Melungeon”.
So, there is a possibility that some people can be both DOT AND FEATHER.
“As far as I know everything but the Scandanavian colony is unsubstantiated myth.”
Have you interested yourself in the most recent research or have you contented yourself with dismissal? PBS had a show on the subject a few years ago–nordic artifacts were indeed found in these areas. It’s really no stretch once you realize they were going to Greenland on a regular basis and were the most intrepid seafarers of the day. That there was a norse settlement in North American in the pre-Columbian era is not really even controversal anymore, though there is varying opinions about how well established they were or whether they came deliberately or by accident. But it made little impact and was quickly forgotten. What has surprised me is the more recent information that there was a pre-Columbian Scandinavian presence in Massachusetts. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v63/n1625/abs/063192a0.html
I am know less about the Chinese and cannot support that. Claims for the Chinese discovery rests on the reputation of a particular Chinese general whose name I cannot remember. Generally the Chinese were not a seafaring people, but this particular individual was quite intrepid.
Wow, it took me a long time to comment on this post. I can totally relate to this story, a little less in the context of being hit on, but definitley in the context of the general public confusing Indian (read: Desi) with Native American. This ends up being pretty common for me because I’m half Desi and half American (of European extraction), so in the winter I’m kind of fair and in the summer, when I’m darker, everyone seems to think I’m Latina or Native American. It’s alarming how many people forget that “Indian” was (even by Columbus) supposed to refer to people from India.
I’ve started just sticking with “South Asian” or “Desi.” Of course, the flip side is that when people finally understand the desi part, quite often, I get some sort of weird hippie mysticism question that follows. You know what I mean, those goofy raise-my-consiousness-kama-sutra-wow-that’s-really-deep-and-spiritual types. They hear “Indian” and pick the wrong stereotype. When I was a teenager, I actually had someone ask me if my dad can levitate (he’s my Desi parent). Can he levitate? Really? I didn’t have a good answer back then, but now I do. The answer is “Of course, he’s an engineer.” (natch)
These are the types that ask me if I “speak Hindu,” and tell me that they’re really into “Indian culture.” They can tell me where all the chakras in the body are, but they wouldn’t know a laddoo if it beaned them in the nose, and I KNOW they’ve never seen “Devdas.” Sheesh.
I guess I’ll never be happy because I don’t want desi culture to be ignored, but I don’t want it to be made into a charicature of any type. I am so fiercly proud of my heritage (on both sides) and so happy that I come from such a diverse place. South Asia is big, bigness produces variety and I want the world to see that.
Frankly, I’m still trying to understand what the race of they guy hitting on you had to do with the story? I get that we are trying to assert that the guy isn’t Indian (which is very obvious mid-way into the story). But really? For instance, I’ve been asked more that once in my MIDWESTERN city, “Where are Indian people from anyway?” I’ve never told that story, including the detail that it’s been blue-eyed, blone women. Why? Because, unless I am trying to add additonal race-based weight to the story (whether consciously or not), it adds nothing to it. Who asked is irrelevant to me. Was it for you?
Interesting topic this, I’ve had a situation in high-school years ago where our English class read ‘I heard the owl call my name’ (a native American story) and I was asked of I was that kind of Indian!