Quote:
Originally posted by CutiePie2000
Uh...people from India *are* "Indians".
"Native Americans" are called the misnomer "Indians" because Columbus landed in North America, saw these brown skinned people, thought he was in India, and called them Indians.
Columbus was wrong and off his target by only a few thousand miles.....
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That story of how Columbus came up with the misnomer is just a nice little story to tell elementary school kids. If you research the Italian, and Latin, language you would see that Indios(sp) is a word meaning God or close to God. It is more likely that Columbus, being Italian, was actually commenting on that fact that these people lived more simply than Europeans, or in the European mindset were close to God. It's a simple linguistical theory to follow.