[单项选择]The Aleuts, residing on several islands of the Aleutian Chain, the Pribilof islands, and the Alaskan Peninsula, have possessed a written language since 1825, when the Russian missionary Ivan Veniaminov selected appropriate characters of the Cyrillic alphabet to represent Aleut speech sounds, recorded the main body of Aleut vocabulary, and formulated grammatical rules. The Czarist Russian conquest of the proud, independent sea hunters was so devastatingly thorough that tribal traditions, even tribal memories, were almost obliterated. The slaughter of the majority of an adult generation was sufficient to destroy the continuity of tribal knowledge, which was dependent upon oral transmission. As a consequence, the Aleuts developed a fanatical devotion to their language as their only cultural heritage.
The Russian occupation placed a heavy linguistic burden on the Aleuts. Not only were they compelled to learn Russian to converse with their overseers and governors, but they had to learn
A. Prior to the Russian occupation they had no religious beliefs.
B. American traders’ and adventurers forced them to abandon all religious beliefs.
C. At no time in their history have the Aleuts had an organized religion.
D. The Russians forced Aleuts to become members of the Russian Orthodox Churc