Where did the idea of early Indians/Native Americans having red skin come from?

Answer 1

Oh gee, boy did some really get this one wrong. Their skin color, first of all, did not come from being out in the sun, any more than a person of African descent has dark skin because of their being in the sun. It's a racial issue, not a sun issue.

The idea of the redskin came from the Delaware Indians. When the first colonists arrived they noticed that in order to keep mosquitoes from biting them during the spring and early summer the Delaware Indians covered themselves with mud from the local rivers. However, the soil was heavy in iron content and therefore the mud was sort of rusty red. This is where the name came from and why the football team in Washington DC, near where the Delaware Indians lived, is called the redskins.

It's not necessarily a pejorative, a negative term. It is more descriptive. However, when the white man went west and started calling every Native American a redskin, then it was used as the basis for racism and persecution.

Answer 2

By 1600's the terms were set:

"West Indians" were the native people Columbus met
"East Indians" those in India

then it was:

"Brown Indians" for the peoples of Mexico
"Red Indians" for the tribes in North America

Early exploriers called folks in the Pacific "Indians" until people got confused and they used geographical or the actual natives names.

The Indians of Today
by George Bird Grinnell - 1911 -
Newfoundland tribes:
The Beothuks are said to have been unusually light in color, although they were commonly called Red Indians, no doubt from the fact that they painted their bodies red.

Answer 3

When Columbus set out to find alternate routes to India he discovered America. Because the native Americans were not brown like the Indians ha may have named them Red Indians.

Answer 4

They were out in the sun, a lot; it was healthier. Europeans came from a Medieval background where the ideal of female beauty was to stay in a castle and avoid the sun--since that was where peasants had to live; so women painted their faces with white lead and held being pale as an ideal.
Naturally,the Indians looked brownish-red to them; and since swarthy Mediterranean types were already called brown, and Africans black even if they were light-skinned, that left "redskins as a name' for the Amerinds the colonists met.

Answer 5

When the men when out tracking for animals and also killed a few Indians and brought back the scalps as proof and payment, the good Christian white women were offended at the word scalps so it became , Two bear skins, two rabbit skins and one red skin

Answer 6

they're good factors were exaggerated by technique of whites. i ought to work out how they were called pink-skinned. Asians are not yellow-skinned, yet they were called yellow. And maximum blacks are genuinely brown, no longer genuinely black. You raise a strong factor nonetheless. White human beings have not frequently said any human beings of colour as "brown". i have merely heard it really is use presently, mainly by technique of folk of colour themselves. by technique of calling American Indians pink extremely of brown, perhaps it turned right into a fashion of seperating them as a diverse team. because in case you imagine about it, each and every race - black, Asian, community, white - and Latino and center jap human beings too - have those with some factor of brownness of their dermis. My wager is that, non"white" races were in no way called brown because to assert "a brown man or woman" does no longer extremely have precise meaning. And Italian will be brown, a Cambodian would properly be brown, an Egyptian would properly be brown, etc. merely is going to demonstrate the arbitrary way in which persons were labeled to racial diverse kinds. searching on the way you seem at it, we are all both so a lot more advantageous similar, or far more advantageous different, than the racial class device enables.

Answer 7

they were usually outside more than not and their skin color already a ruddy color (or olive) as you may have heard for dark haird people will get dark and may have a reddish cast from the sun.

same as why are asian said to have yellow skin, I have actually never seen a yellow asian but I guess their skin may have some hue that had come to look yellow at a point .

don't forget, the upperclass whites never went into the sun for fear of their color darkening. something they did not want to relate to as anyone with dark skin was a savage, or a slave.

Answer 8

John B is 100 % correct.
Also Red Ocher was used to cover the body for adornment.

Answer 9

The fact that their skin color was and is darker than the white man. It was not black so next best thing red.

Answer 10

They did, actually, from their constant exposure to the sun. Just look at some of the old photographs.