Item #7573 Ho i’wi y os’do̱s hăħ neh cha ga̱’o̱ hee dus gee ih’ ni ga’ya do̱s’hă gee. The Four Gospels in the Seneca Language.
Ho i’wi y os’do̱s hăħ neh cha ga̱’o̱ hee dus gee ih’ ni ga’ya do̱s’hă gee. The Four Gospels in the Seneca Language.
Ho i’wi y os’do̱s hăħ neh cha ga̱’o̱ hee dus gee ih’ ni ga’ya do̱s’hă gee. The Four Gospels in the Seneca Language.
Ho i’wi y os’do̱s hăħ neh cha ga̱’o̱ hee dus gee ih’ ni ga’ya do̱s’hă gee. The Four Gospels in the Seneca Language.

Sign up to receive email notices of recent acquisitions.

Ho i’wi y os’do̱s hăħ neh cha ga̱’o̱ hee dus gee ih’ ni ga’ya do̱s’hă gee. The Four Gospels in the Seneca Language.

New York: American Bible Society, 1878. 12mo (7” x 4.125”), decorative blind-stamped black leather over boards, gilt title at spine (“Ne Gai’wiyos duk : Seneca Gospels”). 445 pp. Early owner’s manuscript label in ink at past-down: “Seneca Gospels Translated by Rev. A Wright and Nicholson H Parker (1878).” CONDITION: Cover good+, light wear to extremities and leather cracked at foot of upper and lower hinges; contents very good.

An 1878 printing of the first complete translation of the four Gospels in Seneca, which first appeared in 1872.

This translation of the Gospels is by Asher Wright (1803–1875), a missionary on the Seneca reservation from 1831 to 1875 who helped organize opposition to the corrupt 1838 Treaty of Buffalo Creek. The first translations of Christian material into Seneca were accomplished by an earlier missionary, Thompson S. Harris in the 1820s, and in the early 1850s Wright translated and printed part of Matthew on the Mission press at the Cattaraugus Reservation.

Originally of Hanover, New Hampshire, Wright graduated from Dartmouth College in 1829 and Andover Theological Seminary in 1831, after which he was ordained and moved to Buffalo Creek as a missionary among the Seneca people. He was soon joined by his wife, Laura Maria Sheldon, who also became an active and noted missionary. Wright is especially known for his linguistic work and for his opposition to the 1838 Treaty of Buffalo Creek, which ordered four Seneca reservations to be sold to the Ogden Land Company. Although Wright’s organizing helped to prompt a compromise treaty, which was signed in 1842, the Seneca still lost their claim to the Buffalo Creek Reservation. Wright moved with the Seneca to the Cattaraugus Reservation.

It is likely that Wright collaborated with Nicholson Henry Parker, or Gai-wa-go-wa (Great Message), longtime secretary of the Seneca Nation. Parker worked with Wright on a translation of the Bible, and in an 1855 letter to Parker, Wright expresses his hope that Parker’s translation of John will soon be finished. Nicholson “Nick” Henry Parker (1819–1892) first worked for Wright as an interpreter, printer and clerk. Parker married Laura Maria Sheldon’s niece, Martha Hoyt, and was a brother of Ely Parker, who served as military secretary to Ulysses S. Grant (drafting the documents for Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox), was a close friend and collaborator of Lewis Henry Morgan and became the first Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Parker was a respected orator, and spent several years lecturing on the Iroquois throughout central New York. He was known as “a man of great energy, [who] worked with method and regularity” (Parker, p. 191).

REFERENCES: Darlow & Moule, Historical Catalogue vol. II, 8079 and 8080; Parker, Arthur C. The Life of General Ely S. Parker: Last Grand Sachem of the Iroquois and General Grant’s Military Secretary (Buffalo, New York: Buffalo Historical Society, 1919); Wright, Asher, ALS to Nicholson H. Parker, 7 Feb. 1855, in the Ely Samuel Parker Papers at the American Philosophical Society online.

Item #7573

Sold

See all items in Rare Books