Rare Books - Native American Bibles

1856 - Cherokee Indian Bible

Park Hill: Mission Press, 1856
The Cherokees are the second largest group of Indians in the United States, after the Navajos. They occupied an area from North Carolina to Georgia, but after 1827 they were forcibly removed to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. Cherokee is the only American Indian language with a syllabary devised by one of its own people. Its inventor was Sequoya, a Tennessee Cherokee, in whose honor the species of redwood tree is named. He devised eighty-six symbols for sounds in the Cherokee language. This new written language was completed in 1825, after twelve years' labor. A special type font was cast for the syllabic characters. Parts of the New Testament were printed as early as 1829, although the complete New Testament was not published until 1860. Two books of the Old Testament were printed. Exodus in 1853 and Genesis in 1856. The Translators were S. A. Worcester and S. Foreman.

1875 - Ojibwa Indian Bible

The Ojibwa, or Chippewa, made up one of the largest tribes of North American Indians. In the mid-eighteenth century, they occupied a large area from what is now North Dakota to the east shore of Lake Huron. The Gospels of Mark and John were printed in 1831, and the entire New Testament appeared in 1833, translated by Edwin Hames and John Tanner, missionaries who had worked with the Ojibwa for thirty years.