FIRST (1869) DAKOTA TRANSLATION OF EXODUS AND LEVITICUS 

RARE. No copies have sold at auction since 1979. OCLC locates 19 copies. 

Thomas Williamson, translator. Hdinanpapi, Wowapi Mowis Owa Inonpa Kin, Dakota Iapi en Pejuta Wicasta Kaga. Exodus, The Second Book of Moses, in the Dakota Language. New York: American Bible Society, 1869. 

18mo, 4 x 6 1/2 in., pp. 3-47. Text in Dakota. Original embossed roan leather, gilt board title. 

FIRST EDITION TRANSLATION OF EXODUS & LEVITICUS INTO DAKOTA SIOUX. A Bibliographical Check List of North and Middle American Indian Linguistics, Dakota 28; Darlow & Moule 3142 & 3143 (vol. II, pt. 1, p. 276); Pilling p. 78. 

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 later studied medicine and graduated from Yale in 1824.

Following the death of three of their young children, Williamson and his wife, Margaret Poage, committed themselves to missionary work. In 1834, they were appointed by the American Board to serve Native Americans west of the Mississippi River, and by 1835 had settled in present-day Minnesota among the Dakota. Williamson devoted the remainder of his life to this work, focusing especially on translating the Bible into the Santee dialect. In collaboration with fellow missionary Stephen Return Riggs (1812–1883), he completed a full translation of the Bible in early 1879, just three months before his death. Published in parts, the present volume represents the first Sioux-language edition of Exodus and Leviticus.

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