Cultural Readings - Religion & Print

CULTURAL READINGS: Colonization & Print in the Americas

RELIGION & PRINT
Missionaries and Indian Languages

Understanding and being understood required linguistic common ground. Missionaries studied and codified native languages in western forms that permitted them to be taught and assimilated by neophyte missionaries and, in some cases, by converts.

In New Spain, the printing press played a fundamental part in the conversion effort. Missionary presses were active both in Lima and in Mexico City, where Molina produced a substantial dictionary in Nahuatl and Pareja printed a catechism for the Timucuans in Florida.

French Jesuits struggled to comprend and write the languages of Indians under their dominion, both in the Caribbean, and in Canada, as the Jesuit Relations testify. Some Indians adopted the written form of their language taught by Jesuits, as reports about the Montagnais suggest.

The New England missionary effort also depended upon translation and printing. In the 1660s, John Eliot published a complete translation of the Bible in Massachusett, and a grammar of that language. In the 18th century, the British continued similar work among the Mohawks.

[See related essay on Indian languages by Daniel J. Slive]

Religion and Print

Missionary Accounts
Missionaries and Indian Languages

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	Understanding and being understood required linguistic common ground. Missionaries studied and codified native languages in western forms that permitted them to be taught and assimilated by neophyte missionaries and, in some cases, by converts.
	In New Spain, the printing press played a fundamental part in the conversion effort. Missionary presses were active both in Lima and in Mexico City, where Molina produced a substantial dictionary in Nahuatl and Pareja printed a catechism for the Timucuans in Florida.
	French Jesuits struggled to comprend and write the languages of Indians under their dominion, both in the Caribbean, and in Canada, as the Jesuit Relations testify. Some Indians adopted the written form of their language taught by Jesuits, as reports about the Montagnais suggest.
	The New England missionary effort also depended upon translation and printing. In the 1660s, John Eliot published a complete translation of the Bible in Massachusett, and a grammar of that language. In the 18th century, the British continued similar work among the Mohawks.