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Native Tongues : Colonialism and Race from Encounter to the Reservation / Sean P. Harvey.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2015]Copyright date: ©2015Description: 1 online resource (330 p.) : 15 halftonesContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780674289932
  • 9780674735798
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 323.1197 23
LOC classification:
  • E91 .H37 2015
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Language Encounters and the "Mind of Man, while in the Savage State" -- 2. Descent and Relations -- 3. Much More Fertile Than Commonly Supposed -- 4. Four Clicks, Two Gutturals, and a Nasal -- 5. The Unchangeable Character of the "Indian Mind" -- 6. Of Blood and Language -- Epilogue -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index
Summary: Sean Harvey explores the morally entangled territory of language and race in this intellectual history of encounters between whites and Native Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Misunderstandings about the differences between European and indigenous American languages strongly influenced whites' beliefs about the descent and capabilities of Native Americans, he shows. These beliefs would play an important role in the subjugation of Native peoples as the United States pursued its "manifest destiny" of westward expansion. Over time, the attempts of whites to communicate with Indians gave rise to theories linking language and race. Scholars maintained that language was a key marker of racial ancestry, inspiring conjectures about the structure of Native American vocal organs and the grammatical organization and inheritability of their languages. A racially inflected discourse of "savage languages" entered the American mainstream and shaped attitudes toward Native Americans, fatefully so when it came to questions of Indian sovereignty and justifications of their forcible removal and confinement to reservations. By the mid-nineteenth century, scientific efforts were under way to record the sounds and translate the concepts of Native American languages and to classify them into families. New discoveries by ethnologists and philologists revealed a degree of cultural divergence among speakers of related languages that was incompatible with prevailing notions of race. It became clear that language and race were not essentially connected. Yet theories of a linguistically shaped "Indian mind" continued to inform the U.S. government's efforts to extinguish Native languages for years to come.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780674735798

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Language Encounters and the "Mind of Man, while in the Savage State" -- 2. Descent and Relations -- 3. Much More Fertile Than Commonly Supposed -- 4. Four Clicks, Two Gutturals, and a Nasal -- 5. The Unchangeable Character of the "Indian Mind" -- 6. Of Blood and Language -- Epilogue -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Sean Harvey explores the morally entangled territory of language and race in this intellectual history of encounters between whites and Native Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Misunderstandings about the differences between European and indigenous American languages strongly influenced whites' beliefs about the descent and capabilities of Native Americans, he shows. These beliefs would play an important role in the subjugation of Native peoples as the United States pursued its "manifest destiny" of westward expansion. Over time, the attempts of whites to communicate with Indians gave rise to theories linking language and race. Scholars maintained that language was a key marker of racial ancestry, inspiring conjectures about the structure of Native American vocal organs and the grammatical organization and inheritability of their languages. A racially inflected discourse of "savage languages" entered the American mainstream and shaped attitudes toward Native Americans, fatefully so when it came to questions of Indian sovereignty and justifications of their forcible removal and confinement to reservations. By the mid-nineteenth century, scientific efforts were under way to record the sounds and translate the concepts of Native American languages and to classify them into families. New discoveries by ethnologists and philologists revealed a degree of cultural divergence among speakers of related languages that was incompatible with prevailing notions of race. It became clear that language and race were not essentially connected. Yet theories of a linguistically shaped "Indian mind" continued to inform the U.S. government's efforts to extinguish Native languages for years to come.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Aug 2021)