BOISE, Idaho — For generations, names for many Idaho geographical features have used “squaw,” a derogatory term for Native American women. Squaw Butte. Little Squaw Creek. Squaw Flat. Squaw Meadow. Squaw Joe Canyon.
Of the 660 features on federal lands across the U.S. that use the word, 72, or 11%, are found in Idaho. They’re spread among 21 of Idaho’s 44 counties.
Soon they’ll disappear. The U.S. Department of the Interior will rename the buttes and creeks and canyons after taking public comment.
“Racist terms have no place in our vernacular or on our federal lands. Our nation’s lands and waters should be places to celebrate the outdoors and our shared cultural heritage – not to perpetuate the legacies of oppression,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a news release issued in November.
The agency is now seeking comments on possible replacement names or other suggestions. The deadline is Monday.
Typically, it takes years to rename a geographical feature. Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico and the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary, has expedited the process. She plans to complete the task in a matter of months.
The U.S. Geological Survey in February issued a list of suggested replacement names for the features. They were not necessarily creative, they were simply taken from other nearby features.
Squaw Butte, which towers nearly 5,900 feet north of Emmett, is the best known of the Treasure Valley landmarks carrying the name. Visible from Boise, Nampa and Caldwell, it looms large for motorists entering Emmett from Freezeout Hill on Idaho 16.
The five suggested replacement names come from nearby streams: Corral Creek, Jakes Creek, Haw Creek, Long Hollow Creek and Spring Creek.
“The candidate replacement name will replace the derogatory modifier,” Giovanni Rocco, Haaland’s deputy press secretary, wrote in an email.
The final name doesn’t have to come from the candidate list. The decision will be made after consultations with tribal members and the public. The Interior Department’s Board on Geographic Names will choose the replacement names.
The decision has precedent. At one time, 190 places on federal land used an offensive name for black people; Interior renamed those in 1962. A pejorative term for Japanese people was removed from places in 1974.
“The time has come to recognize that the term ‘squaw’ is no less derogatory than others which have been identified and should also be erased from the national landscape and forever replaced,” Haaland wrote in a November order.
Emmett and Squaw Butte are on traditional Shoshone-Bannock Tribe lands, according to Native Land Digital, a Canadian nonprofit that documents and maps Indigenous lands.
“Removing the words squaw from all of Idaho place names needs to happen,” Randy’L Teton, public affairs manager for the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, wrote in an email last year to the Idaho Statesman.
But the change is not without controversy. At a joint 2015 meeting of the Emmett City Council and the Gem County Board of Commissioners, the audience was nearly unanimous in opposing a name change for Squaw Butte.
“There is no need to initiate a conversation on changing the name of the Butte, because nobody in this community wants to change it,” one Emmett resident said then.
Two hilltops north of Emmett were originally known as Big Butte and Little Butte. For decades, the story has been told that Big Butte was renamed in the 1930s, based on the poem “The Legend of Squaw Butte,” by Mrs. B.R. Wright.
But there were references to Squaw Butte in the Idaho Statesman as far back as 1909, according to online archives maintained by the Boise Library. One article, in October 1924, told how Emmett resident A.J. Sullivan trapped 86 coyotes and four lynx and bobcats near the butte in a month. He was paid a bounty of $2.50 per hide. In 1926, there was a notice for a Gem County grange named for the butte.
Emmett’s butte is the best-known feature that uses offensive word
The poem related the story of a massacre of Indian women and their children based on evidence discovered there. Locals say they can see the image of a “sorrowing mother” based upon a passage in the poem.
At one point, 22 additional Idaho places contained the word. Those names have already been changed.
In 2007, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names approved removing the word from eight place names in North Idaho — three on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation and five outside the reservation but in the tribe’s ancestral territory — after the tribe asked for the changes, according to an Associated Press article at the time.
Of the three changes on the reservation in Kootenai County, the two Squaw Creeks were renamed Squeatah Creek and Nehchen Creek, and Squaw Hump was changed to Nehchen Bluff.
“Words matter, particularly in our work to make our nation’s public lands and waters accessible and welcoming to people of all backgrounds,” Haaland said.
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