Indian giver was first cited in John Russell Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms (1860) as "Indian giver. When an Indian gives any thing, he expects to receive an equivalent, or to have his gift returned."

The general consensus is that Native American's had a distinctly different sense of property ownership as opposed to those of European ancestry.

According to some members of the Choctaw tribe in Mississippi, the term is derived from the fact that white settlers made treaties with Indians and then reneged on them.

A popular myth reverses this and claims a group of Pilgrims traded muskets and other supplies to local Natives in good faith for corn. However, the Indians opened fire with their new weapons, killing or wounding the settlers and reclaiming the corn.

The phrase is considered a racial stereotype because it suggests that Native Americans commonly practiced it.