‘Squaw’ names replaced (OR)

[struggle4progress]

Blue Mountain Eagle
Published on April 26, 2016 6:43PM

Thirteen natural features in Grant County have been re-named, replacing “squaw” titles for new monikers proposed by the Grant County Court and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names approved the new names April 14. The list includes eight creeks, one spring, three meadows and one rock.

Here are the new names, along with their locations, name origins and variant names ...

http://www.bluemountaineagle.com/News/20160426/squaw-names-replaced

[2naSalit]

1. Long overdue.

[KamaAina]

2. Next up: Squaw Valley, CA

The name "Olympic Valley" is also in wide use.

[pinboy3niner]

3. From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame

Mark Monmonier

Offensive toponyms fall into two categories. One type, examined earlier, denigrates racial and ethnic groups. The other variety, dealt with here, offends folks bothered by rude or otherwise impolite references to body parts, sex, excrement, and other no-no’s. A form of geographic cussing, rowdy feature names are markedly less controversial than their ethnically derogatory counterparts, partly because the irreverent miners and ranchers responsible for most of them avoided the F-word and similar shockers, and partly because questionable toponyms occur mostly in remote, sparsely inhabited areas with few eyebrows to raise. Indeed, an outsider who objects to a locally acceptable “naughty name” is quickly branded a stuffed shirt or prude.

...

A less humorous aspect of mammary toponymy is the denigration of Native American women by feature names like Squaw Tit, in its singular or plural form. Derogatory intent seems a bit obvious insofar as squaw is far more commonly paired with the mildly obscene tit than with the more numerous and clinically correct nipple. My canvass of GNIS found only two of the latter: Squaw Nipple (in Montana) and Squaw Nipple Peak (a variant for Squaw Dome, in California). By contrast, squaw is part of 19 of the country’s 28 tit-based names (fig. 4.1), and accounts for roughly equal portions of the 19 official names and 9 variants. What’s more, unlike the nipple appellations that affectionately commemorate white women named Elsie or Molly, none of the tit toponyms mentions anyone, white or Indian, by name. And of the six features with squaw variants, four still have squaw in their official name. Apparently tit was more offensive than squaw to whoever sanitized the official names of Arizona’s Squaw Butte (formerly Squaw Tit), Nevada’s Squaw Mountain and Squawtip (both formerly Squaw Tit), and Texas’s Squawteat Peak (formerly Squawtit Peak). By contrast, geometry edged out racism when features formerly known as Squaw Tit became Thimble Mountain in California and Pushtay (a Sahaptin Indian word for “small mound”) in Washington State. These subtle substitutes suggest a solution for state officials troubled by toponyms pointedly offensive to feminists and Native Americans.

...

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/534650.html