The book offers a general survey of the history of Native American languages. Chapters address these topics: Native American pidgins and trade languages; the history of American Indian linguistics and classification of languages; the origin of Native American languages; languages of North America; languages of Central America; languages of South America; distant genetic relationships between languages, including both research methods and theories; and linguistic areas of the Americas. A series of maps illustrating the geographic distribution of language groups is included. Contents are indexed by subject and author. (MSE)