“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 días 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 Guanahaní” (A la primera que yo hallé puse nombre San Salvador … los Indios la llaman Guanahaní). 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?
