Colonial Missionaries and Indian Languages in North America, 1600-1700

John Pollack

Texts that show English and French missionaries struggling to learn and to represent Indian speech and Indian languages are not simple linguistic records, but instead markers of debates within colonies and between colonists and Native populations. New French Jesuits and Ursulines sought to master Indian languages as a means of including Native tribes within the French colonial orbit, while New England Puritans initiated a massive effort to print in an "Indian language" for separate Native Christian communities. Comprehending the languages of Native America proved to be an unexpected challenge, however, one to which missionaries ultimately responded by drawing newly rigid distinctions between "civilized" and "savage."

[WP# 98016]