Theme

Indigenous Languages

Featured Items

Detail of a printed book shows title page with text in Massachuset and English.

The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ

John Eliot
1661
Detail of brown book binding shows the embossed details.

La istoria de las Indias. y Conquista de Mexico

López de Gómara
1552
Detail of a printed book shows branding marks ("marca de fuego") on the outer edges. Leather binding also partially visible.

Aqui comiença vn vocabulario en la lengua castellana y mexicana,

Alonso de Molina
1555
Detail of a printed book shows text in Mohawk and English.

A primer for the use of the Mohawk children . . .

Daniel Claus
1786

Related

Engraving of two Nahua men speaking to one another. An angel hovers behind one of the men, preventing him from producing idolatrous speech, while the other has a snakes stemming from his mouth, which is representative of such language.
Fellow's Talk

"Brute animals" and "rational creatures": Defining humanity in the Indigenous-language vocabularies and pedagogies of New Spain

Detail from the Tovar Codex, showing a bearded Spanish man atop the symbol for house (calli), while holding a book that points to the letters of the Roman alphabet.
Fellow's Talk

Translating Late Medieval Classics into Nahuatl: The Imitatio Christi and How to Think About Latin-Nahuatl translation

cover image of Códice Santa María Tetelpan

Códice Santa María Tetelpan: A JCB manuscript transcribed, translated, and published in facsimile in Mexico City

October 7, 2020
Image of Peruvian Print Shop
Lecture

Historia del libro en lenguas originarias de América

JCB Fellow Juan Cobo Betancourt views an exhibition at the John Carter Brown Library
Our Fellows

Juan Cobo Betancourt, Donald L. Saunders Fellow

November 25, 2019
detail of "Cuevas de los siete linajes que poblaron en México y alrededor dél" from the Tovar Codex

Paper Worlds of Native Voices

Fall 2019-Winter 2020
detail of a worn manuscript
Lecture

Engaged Digital Scholarship: The Ticha Project and Zapotec language archival texts

Image from: Vue du Détroit de Tinquina. sur le Lac de Titicaca. Plateau des Andes. (Bolivia.) [Alcide Dessalines d'Orbigny 1844]. Original at the John Carter Brown Library.
Fellow's Talk

The Puquina Language in the Seventeenth-Century Andes

See Also

Maritime History

Commodities and Food