paleface meaning (derogatory): definition

paleface

noun

Etymology From pale + face, a supposed calque from a Native American language. First appears in print c. 1797.

Derogatory, Ethnic, Offensive, Slur A white person, a person of European descent, particularly in Native American contexts.

Dere is Great Wicked Spirit, too... Heart grow hard. Great pleasure was to kill pale-face. Dat feeling last, Blossom, till I see you. Feel like fader to you, and don't want your scalp... Still want all udder pale-face scalp. Want Bourdon scalp much as any.1848, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter XXVIII, in The Bee-Hunter, or, The Oak Openings:
The hearts of the palefaces would not thrill to these superstitions of the red men, though we spoke of them in the centre of the haunted region.1889, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Sketches from Memory”, in The Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains:

4 more examples

The dusky hunters "guyed" the palefaces who could not do as well as they with their primitive weapons, even though the fire spouted from the iron tubes and the balls that could not be seen by the eye carried death farther than did the missiles launched by the natives.1905, Edward S. Ellis, Deerfoot in The Mountains:
"Yes me big paleface—me come long way toward setting sun—go cross Big Water—go Buckskin—Siwash—chase cougar." The cougar, or mountain lion, is a Navajo god and the Navajos hold him in as much fear and reverence as do the Great Slave Indians the musk-ox.1908, Zane Grey, The Last of the Plainsmen:
High Jack had been drinking too much rum ever since we landed in Boca. You know how an Indian is—the palefaces fixed his clock when they introduced him to firewater.1909, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “He Also Serves”, in Options:
Some Blackfeet Indians, with a taste and a respect for Nature that shames the paleface, have protested to the Secretary of the Interior[…]1916 March 11, “Silly Place-Names”, in Saturday Evening Post: