Why are some English words native American?

Answer 1

Whenever one culture collides with another (for example Japan and Europe, China and Europe, the Americas and Europe, Australia and Europe) each side finds elements in the other culture that it has never seen before and has no word for in its own language. The Japanese had never seen bread before contact with Europeans, so they adopted a French word (pain) for bread and pronounced it pan.

In exactly the same way English explorers had never seen the kind of footwear made by native Americans, or many of the animals in the New World, or the kinds of houses they found or the food eaten by the natives. All these things and more were completely new, so they tried to adopt the native words: moccasin, wigwam, opossum, succotash. These are all only attempts to say the native word - the word for succotash was really m'sickquatash, moccasin was really mukessinah, wigwam was really weekwahm and opossum was really apasum or wapasum; none of the attempts at absorbing native words was 100% correct.

So no English words are genuinely native American, they are only rough approximations.