ShmoopTube

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by translators,

00:06

people who will get to their foreign language

00:08

homework in a little while.

00:11

Okay... Holy Bible, Indian language.

00:13

And... We're lookin'.

00:14

All right, what does the image suggest about

00:16

the impact of European contact on

00:18

Native American communities?

00:20

And here are your potential answers.

00:22

[ mumbles ]

00:24

[ mumbling continues ]

00:26

[ mumbling continues ]

00:28

Hmm. All right. Well, what can we take

00:30

from this image, other than the fact that

00:32

the font is pretty rad?

00:34

All right. Well, it's a title page from a bible translated into

00:37

the Indian language.

00:39

Nevermind that Native Americans had

00:41

hundreds of different languages. We know that

00:43

someone went to the trouble of translating the Bible into...

00:46

one of them.

00:47

All right, let's check out our answers and see what

00:49

best describes the impact of such a book,

00:51

other than a pretty cramped hand for the translator.

00:54

All right, does this image

00:56

suggest that European contact with Native American

00:58

communities A - caused death

01:00

through disease in Native American society?

01:03

Well, it's true that European contact

01:05

with Native Americans led to death through both disease

01:07

and warfare between tribes,

01:09

but that doesn't have very much to do with our image.

01:11

So it's not A or B.

01:13

Does this image imply that Native American contact with European settlers

01:17

C - forced Native Americans to learn new languages?

01:20

Well, certainly the two groups had trouble communicating,

01:23

but this image suggests that Europeans went

01:25

to great lengths to learn Native American languages

01:28

in order to forcibly spread

01:30

their own religion. That knocks out C, as well.

01:33

Which means that this image suggests

01:34

that European contact with Native American communities

01:37

D - led to distinct changes

01:39

in Native American culture.

01:41

And that, it did.

01:42

As Christianity spread throughout the New World,

01:44

Native American culture was forced

01:46

to react and adapt to the new religion

01:48

sweeping the countryside.

01:50

So D is the correct answer. As in,

01:53

"Do unto others as you would have them

01:55

do unto you." Unless it's inconvenient.

01:58

Then just go with whatever. Yeah.

Full Transcript