9781422277430

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Introduction

What’s in a Name?

In earlier decades, it was common for the indigenous people we now call Native Americans to be referred to as Indians, because Christopher Columbus mistakenly believed he had landed in the Indies. When President Harry Truman welcomed Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on a state visit (below), he tried to cast that mistake

in a positive light, saying, “Destiny willed it that our country should have been discovered in the search for a new route to yours.” Not everyone was so willing to give Colum- bus a pass! In 1948 a prosperous entrepreneur and civic leader named J. J. Singh wrote a letter to the editors of the New York Times , complaining that “Columbus had a word for the natives here and it’s a nuisance to visitors from India.”