Savage was talking about the origin and the meaning of the word “gringo” a while ago. He said that the word was the equivalent of the word “Greek”...that the Indians were implying that the European that they encountered were “Greeks”...something doesn’t compute here...as in how did the Amerindians know about the Greeks? How did they know about European history period? In looking up the term “gringo”, it seems to mean the Indian term for “it’s Greek to me”..sort of a native Amerind way of saying “it’s all gibberish to me”...their version of our “it’s all Greek to me”....they couldn’t have been aware of the actual Greeks.
From Wikipedia — origin of the word “Gringo” (this is the version I always heard of growing up in San Juan, Puerto Rico):
“When the Mexican-American War began in 1846, several hundred recently immigrated Irish, German, and other Roman Catholic Americans who were sent by the U.S. government to fight against Mexico came to question why they were fighting against a Catholic country for a Protestant one, combined with resentment over their treatment by their Anglo-Protestant officers, and deserted to join forces with Mexico. Led by Captain Jon Riley of County Galway, they called themselves St. Patrick’s Battalion (in Spanish, Batallón de San Patricio)[17] and frequently sang the song “Green Grow the Rushes, O”.[citation needed].
The 3rd Cavalry were the only U.S. Cavalry unit to wear green stripes on their trousers, and some believed that during their campaigns in the Southwest they were referred to as Gringos because of that stripe. Because of the prominence of Irish Americans in the regiment, the regimental song was “Green Goes the Rushes, Ho”. It is possible since the soldiers would sing this song as they rode on their horses, the Mexicans associated them with “Green Go...””