draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

There is ample evidence that Quechua served as the lingua franca in the Maynas missions, but
that knowledge of Quechua was not sufficiently universal to supplant the need for evangelical work
in local languages. Maroni ([1738]1988:169), for example, following his discussion of the promotion
of Quechua as a lengua general, remarks:
...sin embargo desto [i.e. the promotion of Quechua as a lengua general], no hay reducción,
por antiqua que sea, en que no se encuentren muchos, especialmente ancianos y mujeres,
que ignoran del todo esta lengua, y así se ve precisado el misionero aprender (sic) la
nativa dellos, siquiera para doctrinarlos y confesarlos. 340
Even in San Joaquin de Omaguas, for example, we find that as late as 1756, Manuel Uriarte
((?:225Uriarte1986) clearly felt the need to become familiar not only with Omagua but also
with Mayoruna (a Panoan language) 341 and Masamae (a Peba-Yaguan language closely related to
Yameo).
The inadequacy of Quechua as a lengua general entailed that the Maynas Jesuits had to commit
themselves learning lenguas particulares. Significantly, the Maynas Jesuits institutionalized this
engagement with indigenous languages by encouraging the development of descriptive resources on
these languages, so that knowledge of these languages could be preserved, thereby not requiring
that each new missionary working with speakers of a given language begin from zero. The resulting
Jesuit linguistic tradition in Maynas is the topic of the next section.
9.2.2 Jesuit Linguistics in Maynas
Detailed and broadly-gauged linguistic research comprised an important part of the work of the
Maynas Jesuits, and was key to their ability to learn the indigenous languages of the region and
prepare ecclesiastical texts in them. The products of this research included grammatical descriptions
(artes) and dictionaries (vocabularios), whose development is described by Chantre y Herrera
(1901:92) in the following terms:
Al principio se contentaron los padres con hacer sus observaciones y advertencias gramaticales,
llenando mucho pliegos de papel para sacar en limpio los números y las declinaciones
más generales de los nombres. Lo mismo hicieron para rastrear y reducir á
conjugaciones los verbos más usuales y señalar los tiempos. Poco á poco y á paso lento,
sudando y remando llegaron á formar las gramáticas que estaban en uso, por las cuales
se ve claramente el artificio de las lenguas. Porque distinguen nombres y pronombres,
con sus números, géneros, declinaciones y casos. Tienen sus conjunciones, adverbios y
posposiciones en vez de preposiciones, como se usa en la lengua vascongada, y vemos
ably the Marañón], each village has, however, its own language, and in each nation one finds only a
few who understand and speak the dominant language [i.e., Quechua].
340 Translation (ours):
...despite this [i.e. the promotion of Quechua as a lengua general], there is no reducción, however old
it may be, in which one does not encounter many, especially elders and women, who know nothing of
this language, and it is thus necessary for the missionary to learn their native language, at least to
catechize them and hear their confessions.
341 See Fleck (2003:1-4) and (Fleck 2007:139-142) for a discussion of this ethnonym.
126