Chapter 1 - Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans and the languages of America

Summary

Translation was, and still is, the central act of European colonization and imperialism in the Americas.

– Eric Cheyfitz, The Poetics of Imperialism

We shall give a free translation [of the speech] for the benefit of the readers; endeavouring, at the same time, to preserve some of the peculiarities, both of the individual and of the language.

– James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

In Chapter X of Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, the villain Magua, a Huron, makes a sharp, unflattering comparison between Native American languages and European ones: “the pale faces are prattling women! They have two words for each thing, while a red skin will make the sound of his voice speak for him.” A haunting remark, because it represents a mode of thought unattested in the documentary record. There is nothing in that record, that is, to tell us how Native Americans experienced European languages.

There are, to be fair, some data about Native American responses to the writtenness of European languages, some anecdotes and some studies of those anecdotes. The anecdotes often tell of wonder. Grigorii Shelikhov, writing in the 1780s, reports sending Kodiak Island Eskimos with letters to his workmen; the Eskimos, he wrote, then

fell into the utmost astonishment, that they [the workmen] should send me back exactly what they knew I wanted from what I had said to them a day or two before, though they had not spoke a word of it. I sent one of them … with a letter to one of my under-traffickers, desiring him to send me some plums and other dried fruits. My messenger, unable to resist the temptation, ate up half of them by the way, as I found by comparing the quantity he brought me with that mentioned in the letter. For this, I chid [sic] him … On this he expressed the most extreme surprise, persuaded as he was that the letter had seen him eat [the fruit].