A number of them attended school, and when they relocated to Oklahoma, they formed a Republic that created numerous social institutions, including common education in the Choctaw language. The Choctaws, living in what is now Mississippi, attained a writing system in the 1820s as a result of intensive missionizing and intermarriage with whites. The southern tribes, the Mixteca, had writing, after all, and we have a bit of the stupendous lyrical literature that was left unburned when the Spanish chose to rid humanity of indigenous cultural artifacts. (How would we know? What’s the difference between a war chant and a poem?) One group that, to my reckoning, clearly composed lyrical poetry was the Uto-Aztecans. It is not clear that native Americans composed much poetry. I am a linguist and scholar of the Choctaw language who comes to translation indirectly. When working in a native American language, these problems are, frankly, insuperable, but we are not thereby let off the hook. These challenges increase when poetry is involved: not only must the meaning emerge, but the product must sound like something that could count as a poem. The challenges of translating from one language to another are well discussed and lamented. Featured Art: Sunset on the Sea by John Frederick Kensett
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