The source of American language

The first genuine Americanisms were undoubtedly words borrowed bodily from the Indian dialects words indicating natural objects that had no counterparts in England.

For example word “opossum” in the form of opasum, in Captain John Smith’s “Map of Virginia” (1612), and, in the form of “apossoun”, in a Virginia document two years older. The word is borrowed from the Algonquin musa, and must have become familiar to the Pilgrim Fathers soon after their landing in 1620

In addition to the names of natural objects, the early colonists, of course, took over a great many Indian place-names, and a number of words to designate Indian relations and artificial objects in Indian use.

In the beginning of the eighteenth century, new words were made during the period by translating Indian terms.

For example: war-path, war-paint, pale-face, big-chief, medicine-man, pipe-of-peace and fire-water. The total number of such borrowings, direct and indirect, was a good deal larger than now appears, for with the disappearance of the red man the use of loan-words from his dialects has decreased. In our own time such words as: papoose, sachem, tepee, wigwam and wampum have begun to drop out of everyday use

From the very earliest days of English colonization the language of the colonists also received accretions from the languages of the other colonizing nations.