The origin of the term "redskin" in English is debated. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) had cited its earliest use in a 1699 letter from an English colonialist, Samuel Smith, living in Hadley, Massachusetts, which supposedly contains the following passage: "Ye firste Meetinge House was solid mayde to withstande ye wicked onsaults of ye Red Skins." Based on this source, the OED suggests the term was specifically applied to the Delaware Indians and "referred not to the natural skin color of the Delaware, but to their use of vermilion face paint and body paint."[8] Smithsonian linguistics scholar Ives Goddard concluded the letter was a "work of fiction", saying that the "language was Hollywood [...] It didn't look like the way people really wrote." The OED agreed with Goddard's findings, stating that the quotation was "subsequently found to be misattributed; the actual text was written in 1900 by an author claiming, for purposes of historical fiction, to be quoting an earlier letter."[9][10][11]
Goddard proposes as an alternative the emergence of the term from the speech of Native Americans themselves and that the origin and use of the term in the late 18th and early 19th century was benign: "When it first appeared as an English expression in the early 1800s, it came in the most respectful context and at the highest level. [...] These are white people and Indians talking together, with the white people trying to ingratiate themselves."[11] The word later underwent a process of pejoration, by which it gained a negative connotation.[8] Goddard suggests that "redskin" emerged from French translations of Native American speech in Illinois and Missouri territories in the 18th and 19th centuries. He cites as the earliest example a 1769 set of "talks" or letters from three chiefs of the Piankeshaw to an English officer at Fort de Chartres. The letter from Chief "Mosquito" (French: Maringouin) had the following passage in French: "I shall be pleased to have you come to speak to me yourself if you pity our women and our children; and, if any redskins do you harm, I shall be able to look out for you even at the peril of my life." ("je serai flatté que tu viennes me parler toi-même si tu as pitié de nos femmes et de nos enfants, et si quels que peaux rouges te font du mal, je saurai soutenir tes intérêts même au peril de ma Vie") Another letter in the set, this from a "Chief Hannanas," contained the following passage: "[...] You think that I am an orphan; but all the people of these rivers and all the redskins will learn of my death." ("[...] tu crois que je suis orphelin, mais tous les gens de ces rivières et tous les peaux rouges apprendront ma mort").[9]
However, in an interview Goddard admits that it is impossible to verify if the native words were accurately translated.[11] Johnathan Buffalo, historic preservation director of the Meskwaki Nation, also known as the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa, said tribal members in the 1800s used "redskins" as a simple term of identifying themselves—just as they identified others as "whiteskins" or "blackskins"—without any derogatory intent.[12]