Braves

August 3, 2007 7:47 PM

How did the word "Brave" originate to identify Native Americans?
posted by obedo to writing & language (6 comments total)

The OED seems to imply that the French word brave is the original source and that the French used the term to describe warriors among Native Americans they encountered, but the etymology doesn't shed too much light other than to say that the English use of the word comes from French:

a. F. brave, not an original Fr. word, but adapted from It. bravo brave, gallant, fine: cf. Sp. and Pg. bravo, Pr. and Cat. brau. Ulterior derivation uncertain. Nearly all the Eng. senses may have been adopted from French.

Also, though the definition puts the use as "since 1800", it seems that there are citations dating from the beginning of the 17th century.

B. n. [in sense 1, directly from F. brave.]

1. a. A brave man, a warrior, soldier: since 1800 applied chiefly to warriors among the North American Indians [after the French in N. America].

1601 CHESTER Love's Mart. (1878) 55 We haue no cause to feare their forreine braues. a1611 CHAPMAN Iliad III. 463 Advance Thy braues against his single power. 1763 CHURCHILL Proph. Fam. Poems I. 118 The race of Roman braves Thought it not worth their while to make us slaves. 1823 BYRON Island III. ii, The wave Is hurl'd down headlong, like the foremost brave. 1837 W. IRVING Capt. Bonneville (1849) 96 The chiefs leading the van, the braves following in a long line, painted and decorated. 1841 CATLIN N. Amer. Ind. (1844) I. vi. 35 A Blackfoot brave whose portrait I have painted.

The OED is by no means the only source of citations, though. I also suspect that words like brawn and bravado might be related to brave in this sense, but my amateur lexicography can only take me so far.
posted by mdonley at 8:00 PM on August 3, 2007

In the complete opposite direction from the OED, Merriam-Webster says it could come (more or less) from the Latin barbarus, as in barbarian, etc.
posted by niles at 8:04 PM on August 3, 2007

niles: Heh, the OED mentioned that too, in a footnote to the etymology, but said it might not work because it doesn't fit with some other words:

(Prof. Storm would associate bravo (in Sp. also bravio) with OIt. braido, brado wild, savage, which is also a sense of Sp. and Pg. bravo; cf. Pr. braidiu fiery, spirited (horse). These he would refer to a Latin type *brabidus, formed from rabidus mad, fierce, of the existence of which there appears to be other evidence. See Romania 1876, p. 170. A more recent conjecture (Romania XIII. 110) tries to derive it from barbarus, but this does not suit Pr. brau.)

"Pr." is Provencal, which I gather was a more pronounced language before the French Revolution and the centralization of the state, though the OED's own abbreviations list says that "Prov." should be Provençal, with the cedilla under the c...there's another layer of mystery!
posted by mdonley at 8:16 PM on August 3, 2007

According to a couple of sources, Carl Waldman's 1994 Word Dance: The Language of Native American Culture posits that it derives from the Spanish term indios bravos ("courageous/warlike [maybe "savage"] Indians") who were contrasted with indios reducidos, or Indians who had been "reduced" or subjugated to Spanish authority.

I think it's clear that the word had currency in a noun sense before it was applied to Native Americans, where through frequent association we stripped it of its more generic meaning.

It's interesting that it doesn't appear at all in the 17th century primary documents from the Plymouth Colony and King Philip's War periods. Mostly, they just call them "Indians" and if referring to warriors "his (i.e. a chief's) men". Somewhere between those and Washington Irving's usage cited above is something approximating the era and place of first usage, and I'm curious about it. It's entirely possible that it became popular in Europe without being a word with strong currency in America simply because of one particular account.
posted by dhartung at 11:30 PM on August 3, 2007

Pilgrim-era primary sources

OK, I examined William Trent's 1763 Journal at Fort Pitt (from the French and Indian War, when both sides used Indians as proxies), and he doesn't use the word at all. "Warriors", yes, "war party", sometimes (more often just "party", a word equally used to describe European groups), and "men", but most often the tribe, e.g. "Delawares".

But Lewis and Clark's journals (1803-1804) have the term all over the place. Many references to "Brave men" (capitalization flexible) where it's clear that these "Brave men" have a special status. In one tribe, they serve as soldiers and village religious police. Among the Sioux, a "curious Society of young men" trained to fight in battle without using concealment or cover. In another case, two Indians introduced themselves to the expedition as "Brave men". They wear special clothing or accoutrements, they perform special dances, they serve as emissaries of the Chief, and paint their horses as well.

The warrior structure of the Plains Indians appears to be what they're documenting here, and it's worth noting that their guide and translator was a French trapper (and later, his half-breed wife). I'm sure there may be other usages, but my hypothesis (without doing any more research) is that the term did not appear in English until the English-speaking Europeans had contact with the Plains Indians, explaining the ~1800 origin.

It would be interesting to know what the word specifically was that the French probably translated as hommes braves, but it seems there was a term.
posted by dhartung at 12:06 AM on August 4, 2007

In the early Spanish texts (Garcilaso I think?) they use indios bravos in the sense mentioned above, savage wild, uncaptured. There's a disticntly menacing tone about it. But it's been years since I read them.
posted by Wilder at 12:44 AM on August 4, 2007