This “playground insult” was used by the wife of a former co-worker to describe the recent move by the government to reduce health care benefits for the people who had retired from the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado and had believed they had a promise of lifetime benefits. The expression is used to describe a person who gives or promises a gift and then takes it back. I guessed it was a description of the practice of the American government signing treaties with the Native Americans and then ignoring what they had promised, but I was completely wrong. It seems the insult originated with Lewis and Clark’s distrust of natives during their expedition. They rejected an offer of a present consisting of roots believing they would be expected to reciprocate with a gift that was “…three or four times their real worth.” Lewis and Clark recorded in their journals that their hosts, who they had insulted, were “forward and impertinent, and thievish.”

Author David Wilton explains that “Indian gift” “…arose when white settlers misinterpreted the Native American concept of bartering…Europeans misunderstood it, considered it uncouth and impolite.”