The geographical definitions of the Perry Camp "racial" slur

Interesting. The WaPo leads an article with this title:

At Rick Perry’s Texas hunting spot, camp’s old racially charged name lingered

  Yet this term was commonly used to identify topographical areas of the landscape.From dictionary.com

Nig”ger*head`\, n. A strong black chewing tobacco, usually in twisted plug form; negro head.

Here an Alaskan describes the term as it was commonly used at his/her home state : 

There is no simple or brief way to describe a nigger-head flat but I will attempt trying. There are kilometre after kilometre of these flats in some areas of central Yukon. Individual nigger-heads vary from approximately 15-25 cm in diameter and 25-40 cm in height. They are tussocks of grass that continue to grow annually of their self; though their core and base are frozen even throughout summer. They are for the most part dead grass brownish yellow in color but the under layers contain live very pale grasses. Picture the back view of a human head with thick straight clinging shoulder-length hair of the colors above.
A flat of nigger-heads are relatively level on top; it is the frozen muck beneath that may be uneven. There is little space between them.

And from Jack London’s Call of the Wild:

He would be lying in camp, dozing lazily in the heat of the day, when suddenly his head would lift and his ears cock up, intent and listening, and he would spring to his feet and dash away, and on and on, for hours, through the forest aisles and across the open spaces where the niggerheads bunched.

From Wiktionary.com

niggerhead (plural niggerheads)

1. (nautical) A bollard made from an old cannon.

1. An isolated part of a coral reef.

1. The coneflower.

1. Hard tussock on tundra; often moss.

  In fact, there are a number of definitions of the term niggerhead, none of which seem to have been modernized by politically correct scolding such as has happened with the word niggardly, which means cheap, but for which professors have been dismissed as using racial slurs because the hearers were ignorant of its meaning.
  Offense taken.
UPDATE: That is not to say it's not time to retire the word. It's just reflective of earlier times, like the word squaw. The kind of fallacious reasoning that prompted a WaPo writer to even write this story in the first place is exactly the reason Huck Finn isn't taught in many schools anymore. Most kids understand that the n* word was a product of an earlier age and that Twain's use of it in the book. 
  The exchange between Huck and Aunt Sally in which she asks if anyone is hurt and Huck responds, "No, ma'am. Killed a nigger" illustrates Twain's post-war literary point is made incisivly and poignantly about antebellum attitudes not having changed much even after a war. 
  It's just too easy to take offense over everything.
  The fact that Perry's family didn't own the land should have stopped the writer right there.
  It'd be nice if Herman Cain, who seems to be a sensible guy, would clarify  his remarks of yesterday and try to soothe the racial divide in this country.
  Also an Arab and African-American writer who voted against Perry for governor defends him here at Big Journalism.