draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley
draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley
draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley
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and explicitly advises the training <strong>of</strong> young children as interpreters in a series <strong>of</strong> directives he writes<br />
for future missionaries:<br />
...con los niños especialmente, que son la esperanza, poner todo empeño, haciéndose<br />
querer de ellos, atrayendo los que se pueda a su casa y ocupándolos en aprender la<br />
doctrina y lenguas para ser después intérpretes, varayos, capitanes, fiscales, etc...<br />
(Uriarte [1776]1986:223, emphasis ours) 357<br />
9.2.4 Ecclesiastical Text Development and Use<br />
The ecclesiastical texts were central to continuity in evangelical practices in the Jesuit reducciones,<br />
both in maintaining uniformity in the texts that Catholic practice demanded that its adherents<br />
commit to memory, and also in aiding newly-arrived priests quickly to attain sufficient competence<br />
to carry out basic evangelical activities. Manuel Uriarte ([1776]1986:192), for example, notes that<br />
upon his arrival in 1754 in San Pablo de Napeanos, an Iquito and Masamae reducción on the lower<br />
Nanay River, he found a variety <strong>of</strong> ecclesiastical texts in Iquito, Yameo and Quechua, which were<br />
written by his predecesor José Bahamonde (b. 1710 Quito – d. 1786 Ravenna), 358 and it is clear<br />
that the availability <strong>of</strong> these resources were invaluable in both learning to speak the local languages<br />
and in carrying out evangelical work in them (see also Chantre y Herrera (1901:485)). And as<br />
Chantre y Herrera (1901:637) observes, the availability <strong>of</strong> translated ecclesiastical texts allowed the<br />
missionaries to adapt their linguistic choices to the communities in which they worked:<br />
...y si eran varios [i.e. the languages used in the community], [the priest held mass] en<br />
la principal y más común según el padre juzgaba más conveniente, porque en todas las<br />
lenguas que eran muchas tenían los misioneros sus traducciones. 359<br />
It is ecclesiastical texts <strong>of</strong> this type that are the empirical focus <strong>of</strong> this volume, and the purpose <strong>of</strong><br />
this section is clarify how these critical resources in the Jesuit project in Maynas were developed. The<br />
key point we make with respect to this issue is that the development <strong>of</strong> these texts is most accurately<br />
conceived <strong>of</strong> as a communal and collaborative endeavor, both among concurrently active missionaries<br />
and speakers <strong>of</strong> indigenous languages who shared knowledge <strong>of</strong> a given language, but also through<br />
time, as successive generations <strong>of</strong> missionaries sought to improve and clarify the ecclesiastical texts<br />
that came down to them.<br />
It is clear that in developing the first versions <strong>of</strong> ecclesiastical texts in lenguas particulares,<br />
the Maynas Jesuits typically relied on multilingual individuals to translate a version in the lengua<br />
particular from an extant Quechua text. D’Etre, for example, describes the development <strong>of</strong> the first<br />
357 Translation (ours):<br />
...especially with the children, who are our hope, make every effort, endearing them, attracing those<br />
one can to one’s house and occupying them with learning the doctrine and languages to later become<br />
interpreters, varayos, captains, fiscales [lay church positions], etc...<br />
358 (Jouanen 1943:726)<br />
359 Translation (ours):<br />
...and if there were several [i.e. languages used in the community], [the priest taught] in the main and<br />
most common [language], as the father found convenient, because in all the languages, and they were<br />
numerous, the missionaries had translations [i.e. <strong>of</strong> the ecclesiastical texts].<br />
131