The Language Encounter in the Americas, 1492-1800

by Gray, Edward G.; Fiering, Norman

• ISBN13: 9781571811608
• ISBN10: 1571811605
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-11-01
• Publisher: Berghahn Books

Summary

For the first time, historians, anthropologists, literature specialists, and linguists have come together to reflect, in the fifteen original essays presented in this volume, on the various modes of contact and communication that took place between the Europeans and the "Natives" and on how the encounters affected the character of cultural, social, political, and religious life in the diverse societies of the Americas. A particularly important aspect of this fascinating collection is the way it demonstrates the interactive nature of the encounter and how Native peoples found ways to shape and adapt imported systems of spoken and written communication to their own spiritual and material needs.

Author Biography

James Axtell is Kenan Professor of Humanities at the College of William and Mary. Kathleen J. Bragdon is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary. Norman Fiering is Director and Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. Ives Goddard is Curator and Head of the Division of Ethnology, Department of Anthropology, at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Edward G. Gray is Assistant Professor of History at Florida State University. Bruce Greenfield is Associate Professor of English at Dalhousie University. William B. Hart is Assistant Professor of History at Middlebury College. Lieve Jooken is lecturer in English at the Economische Hogeschool St. Aloysius, Brussels, Belgium. Frances Karttunen is Senior University Research Scientist at the Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. Margaret J. Leahey is Associate Professor of Humanities and Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Gwynedd-Mercy College. Dana Leibsohn is Assistant Professor in the Art Department at Smith College. Isaias Lerner is Professor of Hispanic Literature at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Jose Antonio Mazzotti is Assistant Professor in the Department of Romance Languages at Harvard University. Rudiger Schreyer is Akademischer Oberrat at the Institut fur Anglistik, Aachen University of Technology, Germany. Pauline Moffitt Watts is a member of the European History faculty at Sarah Lawrence College.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Norman Fiering
Introduction	1	(14)
Edward G. Gray
I. Terms of Contact
Babel of Tongues: Communicating with the Indians in Eastern North America	15	(46)
James Axtell
The Use of Pidgins and Jargons on the East Coast of North America	61	(20)
Ives Goddard
II. Signs and Symbols
Pictures, Gestures, Hieroglyphs: ``Mute Eloquence'' in Sixteenth-Century Mexico	81	(21)
Pauline Moffitt Watts
Iconic Discourse: The Language of Images in Seventeenth-Century New France	102	(17)
Margaret J. Leahey
Mapping after the Letter: Graphology and Indigenous Cartography in New Spain	119	(36)
Dana Leibsohn
III. The Literate and the Nonliterate
Continuity vs. Acculturation: Aztec and Inca Cases of Alphabetic Literacy	155	(18)
Jose Antonio Mazzotti
Native Languages as Spoken and Written: Views from Southern New England	173	(16)
Kathleen J. Bragdon
The Mi'kmaq Hieroglyphic Prayer Book: Writing and Christianity in Maritime Canada, 1675-1921	189	(26)
Bruce Greenfield
IV. Intermediaries
Interpreters Snatched from the Shore: The Successful and the Others	215	(15)
Frances Karttunen
Mohawk Schoolmasters and Catechists in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Iroquoia: An Experiment in Fostering Literacy and Religious Change	230	(28)
William B. Hart
The Making of Logan, the Mingo Orator	258	(23)
Edward G. Gray
V. Theory
Spanish Colonization and the Indigenous Languages of America	281	(12)
Isaias Lerner
Descriptions of American Indian Word Forms in Colonial Missionary Grammars	293	(17)
Lieve Jooken
``Savage'' Languages in Eighteenth-Century Theoretical History of Language	310	(17)
Rudiger Schreyer
Select Bibliography	327	(5)
List of Contributors	332	(2)
Index	334