Links to Offsite Resources for Algonquian Texts

New England missionaries like John Eliot and Experience Mayhew published both works in English to help with fundraising efforts and works in Algonquian languages that were aimed directly at the Indian converts. Many of the Algonquian language texts were translations of important Puritan texts such as the Bible, Lewis Bayley’s Practice of Piety, Richard Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted, and key colonial sermons.

Today, some Wampanoags are relearning their language through the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project.

Resources

F.R. Higgins of UMass Amherst has created a digital collection of many of the documents published in the Massachusett and Wôpanâak languages during the colonial era. In addition he has included Vocabularies, and Grammatical and Pedagogical Materials. If one has access to Evans Digital (Early American imprints. Series I, 1639-1800), one can also see reproductions of the original publications by typing in the search term "Algonquian."

These works will be of greater use to students who have some familiarity with linguistics or who have taken coursework on Algonquian languages, such as Rob Brightman's Ling/Anthro 348: Languages of the Americas.