Geraldo U. de Sousa, Xavier University

"Away, burn all the records of the realm: my mouth shall be the parliament of England"

—Jack Cade, 2 Henry VI.

Jean de Léry, a Frenchman who lived in Brazil for several months starting in 1555, offers an account of the Tupinamba Indians' reaction when they first encountered reading and writing. The Tupinamba, if we are to judge from Léry's narrative, thought the Europeans possessed magical powers:

They know nothing of writing, either sacred or secular; indeed; they have no kind of characters that signify anything at all. When I was first in their country, in order to learn their language I wrote a number of sentences which I then read aloud to them. Thinking that this was some kind of witchcraft, they said to each other, "Is it not a marvel that this fellow, who yesterday could not have said a...