Jun 21, 2016 - Sale 2420

Sale 2420 - Lot 11

Price Realized: $ 3,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(AMERICAN INDIANS.) [Thayer, William A.?] Hymns in the Seneca Language. 24 pages. 12mo, original plain wrappers, backstrip gone; inscription of original owner Miss A. Bishop of Seneca Mission on title page (slightly cropped), inked Arthur C. Parker stamps on wrappers and final page. Buffalo, NY: S.H. Salisbury, 1829

Additional Details

Includes 9 hymns in Seneca and English on facing pages. Pilling does not record this title, but does include a reference from the 1829 Missionary Herald that "Two small collections of hymns in the Seneca language have recently been published: one by the Rev. T.S. Harris, missionary at Seneca, and the other by Mr. Thayer, the teacher at Cattaraugus, aided by interpreters" (Pilling, Iroquoian, page 161). The 1829 Harris hymn book has since come to light (Gainoh ne Nenodowohga Neuwahnuhdah / Indian Hymns in the Seneca Tongue), so this may be the otherwise unrecorded Thayer hymn book. Not in the Severance or McMurtrie listings of Buffalo imprints; not traced in OCLC or auction records. It does appear as Shaw & Shoemaker 40140, as a Presbyterian Church publication, with one copy listed at the Rochester Museum.