It seems that almost 900 place-names in the US include the word "squaw". A majority of the Indian tribes want it changed -- but of course, each wants to replace it with a word from its own language.

Why? In 1992 an activist, speaking on the Oprah TV show, asserted that the word comes from a Mohawk word for female genitalia. But very few names have been changed. Perhaps that's because the linguists don't agree with the activist.

Can we help clarify the etymology?

I can't help about "squaw" - except to observe that I heard once that baby Indians are called "squawlers" - but maybe that was a joke.

However, so far as Bowdlerising place names is concerned - where will it ever end? I can already see the petitions being drawn up by the denizens of Massachusetts, the concern of the inhabitants of Wyre Piddle - and as for the good burgers of Scunthorpe - well, the mind assuredly boggles.

The etymology is in no serious doubt. Massachusett [skwa] or similar, '(young) woman', from Proto-Algonquian *[eθkwe:wa]. It was borrowed into English in the early 1600s from the Massachusett people, and had nothing to do with the geographically and linguistically remote Mohawks. It bears a superficial and chance resemblance to part of the Mohawk word [otsískwa?], but that's no evidence at all for relatedness. The Algonquian languages are well known and their history can be reconstructed.

Having become an English word in the 1600s, there's no evidence that it was derogatory at first. But it is used negatively by Cooper in the early 1800s, and clearly was widely used in its present derogatory sense thereafter.

Summary of the evidence and controversy at Koontz's etymology page and the document by Bright mentioned in it.