Abenaki and English: Two Languages for One World of God

In “New familiar Abenakis and English Dialogues,” Chief Joseph Laurent preserves the Abenaki language and teaches English to the Abenaki youth through direct translation of relevant words, grammar, and phrases from Abenaki to English language. His further purpose for writing on the grammatical system was to show English speakers that “Abenaki vocal organs express God’s attributes” in the same way that English does, so that the white man might accept their language (5). Chief Laurent justifies the language through religious relations and explains the significance and pronunciation of all words to illustrate the connection between these two languages and peoples that seem to be so diverse. This book is a rare and early attempt by a native speaker to preserve an indigenous language.

In the Preface, Chief Laurent calls out the ignorant white people, however polite and subtle he is, by saying that he “hopes that many white people will be glad to avail themselves… with very little trouble… with that truly admirable languages of those Aborigines called Abenakis… which means: peasant or inhabitant from the east” (6). By italicizing admirable and Abenakis, he emphasizes their specialness to him and critiques the words used by white people to describe the Abenakis, such as "Aborigine" and words that certainly would not reflect admiration based on how white people discriminated against and dominated Native Americans, grouping the Abenakis into an unimportant, culture-less peoples.

In Skull Wars, David H. Thomas considers the idea that Native American culture is forcibly paused in time and simultaneously destroyed by white Americans. Thomas referred to Native Americans as being both “alive and archaic” (Thomas, 46). There was a rush to record indigenous culture by white anthropologists because it was disappearing; and it was disappearing because white Americans were pushing Natives away from their traditional practices and towards assimilation in white “culture” that, at the time, was represented by the American Dream (Thomas, 65). Indigenous peoples were not recording their own culture on paper, but they had strong oral traditions. Furthermore, many anthropologists and other whites believed that Native American culture and language was part of tribalism. They believed Native Americans needed to become civilized.

Alice Fletcher, an anthropologist in the 1870s, was a firm believer who “decided that she should record their traditional customs before they disappeared forever” since “nobody would ever become ‘civilized’ on an Indian reservation” (Thomas, 66). Chief Laurent’s book is a push-back against the “Americanization” and white-record keeping of Native American culture and language. When white anthropologists and others studied and represented Native American culture, they did so through a colonial lens, often misspelling and misrepresenting key parts of their traditions. In the bulk of the text, Chief Laurent writes hundreds of words used in every day discussions that would be relevant to know in both languages to communicate across borders. He includes the keys to pronunciation, grammatical explanations, illustrations showing the modifications of the Abenaki verb, and later included Abenaki names of rivers, lakes, mountains, and other localities. The point of spending his time making these translations clear and available was to discredit any white misrepresentation of their homeland and oral traditions. The book was his way of assuming agency over his and his community’s Abenaki identity.

The Etymology at the end of this book has a similar purpose as the Preface. Chief Laurent refers to the “uncultivated” Abenaki language that he is trying to preserve that has been distorted by “the Whites, who not understanding these words, pronounced them in the best way they could…” (205). He begins his insult softly by saying that they did their “best,” but he goes on to claim that white people have “rendered many… [words] incomprehensible” (205). Chief Laurent employs the same use of soft humor to insult white people and add some comic relief for his fellow Abenaki who understand the English text. Even their name “Abenaki” has been misspelled and mispronounced by “professional” white explorers, like Schoolcraft who spelled it “Abnaki” in his writings (this was found in Schoolcraft’s Ethnology in Middlebury Special Collections). According to Chief Laurent, many white people did not take the time or make the effort to correctly represent the tribal language in their writings, and thus, the languages became cultivated by English speakers. Their original messages, meanings, and significances are altered and the Native peoples lose part of their personal narrative by this loss of their language. Thomas points out that typically “the winners got to write the history books” (Thomas, 5), so the “Abenakis and English Dialogues” is a reclamation by Chief Laurent of Abenakis history and a refusal to surrender to white anthropologic and linguistic rule.

Works Cited

Laurent, Joseph. New familiar Abenakis and English dialogues, the first ever published on the grammatical system, by Jos. Laurent, Abenakis chief. Quebec, Printed by L. Brousseau, 1884. Print.

Thomas, David. Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity. New York, NY, 2000. Print.

Written by Katharine Fortin, December 2016, Colonialism and Indigeneity--Marybeth Nevins