Someone who does not support, or remain loyal to, any political group
The term is understood to have been adapted from a native American word meaning "war leader, duke, important person", and was first used regularly in politics as the name for a group of political activists in the United States who were intensely opposed to political corruption and switched from Republican to Democrat to support Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland in the presidential election of 1884. The term also occurs in books by Roald Dahl, William Burroughs and J.K. Rowling, and is the name of a lake monster thought to live in Lake Timiskaming, on the border of the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec.
