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 "Roger Williams is probably best known today for his distinctive role in early American history as the champion of religious and civil freedoms, a man whose opposition to the theocratic ambitions of the Puritans led to his exile to Rhode Island, to live in close proximity to the Indians of the region. Here I concentrate on one remarkable product of that exile, his 'A Key into the Language of America,' or 'An Help to the Language of the Natives in that part of America called New England.' The larger context of this essay is a concern with the complex of ideas and activities represented as exchange, conversion and translation between Indians and whites in early contacts—not just what is being exchanged, but what is the rhetoric of exchange itself—and Roger Williams’s peculiar situation, between white and Indian societies makes him a particularly useful and intriguing figure." |
