FIRST (1879) COMPLETE DAKOTA BIBLE TRANSLATION OF 1ST KINGS TO JOB WITH DIRECT SIOUX OWNERSHIP INSCRIPTION

[Thomas S. Williamson and Stephen Return Riggs, translators]. [The Books of First and Second Kings, First and Second Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Job in the Language of the Dakotas.] Cover title: Dakota. 1st Kings to Job.[New York: American Bible Society, 1879].

18mo, 4¼ x 6⅞ in. pp. 479–754, Bible selections in Siouan/Dakota. Original embossed roan leather, gilt title to front board.

FIRST DAKOTA TRANSLATION OF 1ST KINGS TO JOB. Checklist of North and Middle American Indian Linguistics, Dakota 29; Pilling, pp. 79–80.

VERY RARE. OCLC locates only two copies. No copies have ever appeared at auction.

Thomas Smith Williamson (1800–1879) was the son of a South Carolina planter who relocated to Ohio in 1805, having resolved to emancipate the enslaved people he had inherited. Williamson studied medicine, graduating from Yale in 1824. After the death of three of their young children, he and his wife, Margaret Poage, committed themselves to missionary work and were appointed by the American Board in 1834 to serve Native Americans west of the Mississippi River. They established a new station and were settled in present-day Minnesota among the Dakota by 1835. Williamson served the Dakota for the remainder of his life, particularly devoting himself to a complete translation of the Bible into the Santee dialect. Working with fellow missionary Stephen Return Riggs (1812–1883), he completed a translation of the entire Bible in early 1879, just three months before his death.

Williamson and Riggs had previously published an incomplete Dakota Bible in 1874; however, it lacked eight books (1st Kings through Job) from the Old Testament, which were not included until this 1879–1880 edition. As Pilling notes, “these additions make the Dakota Bible complete—the first, so far as I know, except the Cree and Eskimo, in any Indian tongue since Eliot’s Bible in the Massachusetts language” (Pilling, p. 80).

MISSIONARY AND NATIVE OWNERSHIP INSCRIPTIONS to the front free endpapers: “Return to E. J. Lindsey / Allen S. Dak.” Verso: “Joshua Walker / Porcupine / S. Dak. Oct. 15 – 1927.”

Reverend Edwin J. Lindsey served as District Missionary for the Dakota Indian Mission of the Presbyterian Church of the U.S.A., residing in Allen, South Dakota, with his family from the 1890s through at least the 1910s. The 1898 Annual Report of the Board of Home Missions notes: “Rev. E. J. Lindsey and his native helpers are meeting with marked success in their work among the Indians. About forty have recently expressed a desire to live as Christians.”

Evidently, Lindsey later gave this book to one of his congregants, as the subsequent inscription identifies Joshua Walker, recorded in the 1930 Federal Census as a “Full Blood Sioux,” born circa 1897, married to Esther (also Sioux), with a young son named Francis.

A very rare volume with excellent provenance linking a Presbyterian missionary and a Dakota owner. An important publication in the history of Native-language Bible translation.

[Books, Bibles, Soldiers’ Bibles, Prayer Books, Ephemera, Pamphlets, Publications, Booklets, Memoirs] [Native Americans, Native American History, American Indian, Indian History]

Lacking title page and final leaf (p.755). Rubbed corners, front joint split. Evidence of old spine repair with fabric and adhesive residue. Light dampstaining.