PAOD UC TON
33 lines✦
S, AW ee AAA Corumsus in 1492 thought that he had reached theIndies. So he called the red people that he saw “ In-dians.” This was of course a mistake. The Indies werethousands of miles from the land found by Columbus.But the name has been kept ever since and to this dayall the red people of America are called “ Indians.”White men after Columbus made many other mis-takes about red men. White men at first did not under-stand the language of red men and red men did notunderstand the language of white men. They could talkwith each other only by pointing at things and by mak-ing signs. Often the signs were not understood. White men and red men soon began to learn words from each INTRODUCTION other, but even then there were mistakes. The words ofdifferent red men sounded much alike and for a longtime white men thought that all red men spoke thesame language. A book written in 1643 has the title:A Key to the Indian Language of North America.Later it was learned that there were more than fifty dif-ferent Indian languages. A real understanding of Indian languages beganwhen white men, here and there, went to live among In-dians. Sometimes they did this to carry on trade, some-times to teach Indians the ways of white men, andsometimes just to learn Indian ways. In time friendlyIndians were led to talk freely to some of these whitemen about Indian ways of living and Indian ways ofthinking about things. This has been going on for threehundred years and there are now so many books bywhite men who lived among Indians that it would take years and years to read them all,
✦