The Lenâpé and Their Legends / With the complete text and symbols of the Walam olum, a new translation, and an inquiry into its authenticity

by Daniel G. Brinton

The Moravian Bishop, John Ettwein, was another of their fraternity who applied himself to the study of the Delaware. Born in Europe in 1712, he came to the New World in 1754, and died at the great age of ninety years in 1802. He prepared a small dictionary and phrase book, especially rich in verbal forms. It is an octavo MS. of 88 pages, without title, and comprises about 1300 entries. This manuscript exists in one copy only, in the Moravian Archives at Bethlehem.

Bishop Ettwein also prepared for General Washington, in 1788, an account of the traditions and language of the natives, including a vocabulary. This was found among the Washington papers by Mr. Jared Sparks, and was published in the "Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Historical Society," 1848.

One of the most laborious of the Moravian missionaries was the Rev. Adam Grube. His life spanned nearly a century, from 1715, when he was born in Germany, until 1808, when he died in Bethlehem, Pa. Many years of this were spent among the Delawares in Pennsylvania and Ohio. He was familiar with their language, but the only evidence of his study of it that has come to my knowledge is a MS. in the Harvard College Library, entitled, "Einige Delawarische Redensarten und Worte." It has seventy-five useful leaves, the entries without alphabetic arrangement, some of the verbs accompanied by partial inflections. The only date it bears is "Oct. 10, 1800," when he presented it to the Rev. Mr. Luckenbach, soon to be mentioned.

After the War of 1812 the Moravian brother, Rev. C. F. Dencke, who, ten years before had attempted to teach the Gospel to the Chipeways, gathered together the scattered converts among the Delawares at New Fairfield, Canada West. In 1818 he completed and forwarded to the Publication Board of the American Bible Society a translation of the Epistles of John, which was published the same year.

He also stated to the Board that at that time he had finished a translation of John's Gospel and commenced that of Matthew, both of which he expected to send to the Board in that year. A donation of one hundred dollars was made to him to encourage him in his work, but for some reason the prosecution of his labors was suspended, and the translation of the Gospels never appeared (contrary to the statements in some bibliographies).

It is probable that Mr. Dencke was the compiler of the Delaware Dictionary which is preserved in the Moravian Archives at Bethlehem. The MS. is an oblong octavo, in a fine, but beautifully clear hand, and comprises about 3700 words. The handwriting is that of the late Rev. Mr. Kampman, from 1840 to 1842 missionary to the Delawares on the Canada Reservation. On inquiring the circumstances connected with this MS., he stated to me that it was written at the period named, and was a copy of some older work, probably by Mr. Dencke, but of this he was not certain.

While the greater part of this dictionary is identical in words and rendering with the second edition of Zeisberger's "Spelling Book" (with which I have carefully compared it), it also includes a number of other words, and the whole is arranged in accurate alphabetical order.

Mr. Dencke also prepared a grammar of the Delaware, as I am informed by his old personal friend, Rev. F. R. Holland, of Hope, Indiana; but the most persistent inquiry through residents at Salem, N. C., where he died in 1839, and at the Missionary Archives at Bethlehem, Pa., and Moraviantown, Canada, have failed to furnish me a clue to its whereabouts. I fear that this precious document was "sold as paper stock," as I am informed were most of the MSS. which he left at his decease! A sad instance of the total absence of intelligent interest in such subjects in our country.

The Rev. Abraham Luckenbach may be called the last of the Moravian Lenapists. With him, in 1854, died out the traditions of native philology. Born in 1777, in Lehigh county, Pennsylvania, he became a missionary among the Indians in 1800, and until his retirement, forty-three years later, was a zealous pastor to his flock on the White river, Indiana, and later, on the Canada Reservation. His published work is entitled "Forty-six Select Scripture Narratives from the Old Testament, embellished with Engravings, for the Use of Indian Youth. Translated into Delaware Indian, by A. Luckenbach. New York. Printed by Daniel Fanshaw, 1838." 8vo, pp. xvi, 304.

After his retirement in Bethlehem, he edited, in 1847, the second edition of Zeisberger's "Collection of Hymns," the first of which has already been mentioned.