"Indian giver" is a pejorative expression used to describe a person who gives a "gift" and later wants it back or who expects something of equivalent worth in return for the item.
[2] The phrase is used to describe a negative act or shady business dealings, and is considered offensive to many Indigenous American people.
[3] The phrase originated, according to the researcher David Wilton, in a cultural misunderstanding that arose when European settlers first encountered Native Americans after the former had arrived in North America in the 15th century.
As recently as 1979, the phrase was used in mainstream media publications,[7] but in the 1997 book The Color of Words: An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Ethnic Bias in the United States, the writer and editor Philip H. Herbst says that although the phrase is often used innocently by children, it may be interpreted as offensive,[8] and The Copyeditor's Handbook (1999) describes it as objectionable.
So this native practice got a bad reputation among the white colonists of North America and the term eventually became a playground insult.