A papoose is an American English loanword

Loanword

A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...

 whose present meaning is "a Native American Indian child" (regardless of tribe

Tribe

A tribe, viewed historically or developmentally, consists of a social group existing before the development of, or outside of, states.Many anthropologists use the term tribal society to refer to societies organized largely on the basis of kinship, especially corporate descent groups .Some theorists...

) or, even more generally, any child, usually used as a term of endearment, often in the context of the child's mother. The word came originally from the Narragansett

Narragansett (tribe)

The Narragansett tribe are an Algonquian Native American tribe from Rhode Island. In 1983 they regained federal recognition as the Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island. In 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled against their request that the Department of Interior take land into trust...

 tribe. In 1643 Roger Williams' recorded the word in his A Key Into the Language of America

A Key Into the Language of America

A Key into the Language of America is a book written by Roger Williams in 1643 describing the Native American languages in New England in the 17th century...

helping to popularize it.

The term is also used when referring to Cradle boards and other child carriers, which were used by Native American Indians and went by many names. In the United States and the United Kingdom, the term papoose is used to refer to a child carrier.