In 1643, Roger Williams wrote and published A Key into the Language of America, the most comprehensive ethnographic survey produced, to date, about the native peoples of New England. The Key continues to be used today as an anthropological study of 17th century American Indian culture, a phrase book of the Narragansett language, and a commentary on 17th American Indian life during the early.
Roger Williams’s A Key into the Language of America, first published in 1643, is one of the most important artifacts of early Indigenous American culture. In it, Williams recorded the day-to-day experience of the Narragansett people of Rhode Island in their own words, the first documentation of an American Indian language in English.
It includes the following works: Williams's A Key into the Language of America (originally published in 1643), A Letter of Mr. John Cottons. .. in New-England to Mr. Williams (originally published in 1643), and Williams's Mr. Cottons Letter Lately Printed, Examined and Answered (originally published in 1644). The writings in this edition.
A Key into the Language of America or An help to the Language of the Natives in that part of America called New England) is a book written by Roger Williams in 1643 describing the American Indian languages in New England in the 17th century, largely Narragansett, an Algonquian language. The book is the first published study of an Amerindian language in English.