Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a white member of the East India Company or other expatriate within the Raj.

1844		J.W. Kaye Peregrine Pultuney I 219: ‘It will be horrid stupid at one of the boarding houses [...] with a score of old Indians with us — ’ ‘To call us griffs’.
1861		Hills & Plains I 301: ‘She want to engage the afiections of an ugly, stupid, bashful, tongue-tied old Indian! dear me!’.
1885		L. Emanuel Jottings [...] of a Bengal ‘qui hye’ 10: ‘Qui-hye’ [...] is a term that will be readily and pleasingly recognised by every old ‘Indian’.

2. an uncouth, rowdy person, irrespective of actual race.

1849		J.J. Hooper ‘The Muscadine Story’ in Chittick Ring-Tailed Roarers (1941) 248: Git up, you lazy Injun.
1896		Ade Artie (1963) 30: This guy’s an Indian. He won’t do. He do n’t belong.
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 307: ‘Oh, yees two Injuns has come to, has yees?’ said the wardman [...] ‘an’ th’ divil’s own pair yees are, t’ say th’ laste.’.
1935		S. Kingsley Dead End Act I: The little Indians! They oughtn’t to be allowed in the street with decent people.
1958		(con. 1945) F. Davis Spearhead 116: Your daughter is a bad girl. Keegan, you’re a bad Indian.
1973		S. Ace Stand On It (1979) 213: ‘F-u-c-k-i-n-g I-n-d-i-a-n,’ he said.

3. a person.

1903		Ade People You Know 55: If he’s the Indian you want to see, I’ll show you where he hangs out.
1908		‘O. Henry’ ‘Extradited from Bohemia’ in Voice of the City (1915) 202: The young men said he was an ‘Indian.’ He was supposed to be an accomplished habitue of the inner circles of Bohemia.
1910		O. Johnson Varmint 55: Is this the line of talk you’ve been putting out to that bunch of Indians down in the Green?
1914		M. Glass Abe and Mawruss 194: ‘That other crazy Indian over there,’ Morris continued, pointing to the professor.
1922		S.V. Benét Young People’s Pride 175: Good Lord – Paris! Why you lucky, lucky Indian!

4. a cent [a picture of a Native American was engraved on the reverse].

1893

A.R. MacDonald Prison Secrets 311: The borrowed penny [...] inherits the twelve ‘Indians’ in the ‘pot’ [HDAS].

5. a quick temper; usu. as get one’s Indian up

1893		C.G. Leland Memoirs 320: It woke Colonel John Forney up to the very highest pitch of his fighting ‘Injun,’ or, as they say in Pennsylvania, his ‘Dutch’ [DA].
1979		Maledicta III:2 160: Indian n [DA 1888] 1: Temper; Irish and Dutch are used similarly though Indian implies a greater vindictiveness and stubbornness than either of the other; from the popular stereotype.