Mi kmaq Script (1 results)

8vo (120 x 178 mm). 3 volumes bound in two. 146 pp.; (3)-109, (3) pp. 209, (1) pp., printed on blue-green paper; two lithographed titles. With 5 engraved frontispieces. Text in Mi'kmaq ideographs, accompanied by German headings. Both volumes bound in matching black oil-cloth, wallet-style, with a natural cloth tie. Stored together in a custom-made, felt-lined black cloth case with gilt lettering to spine. Only edition of the Christian catechism, meditations and hymnal for the Mi'kmaq, a First Nations People of Nova Scotia, printed in their hieroglyphic writing (also known as Suckerfish script): the first and long the only books ever published in this writing developed by the French Jesuit Chretien Leclercq in the 17th century, apparently based on an existing pre-conquest native script. - The publication was brought about through the efforts of the Luxembourgian missionary Christian Kauder (1817-77), achieved from ideographic type cast expressly for this purpose in Vienna. Kauder had entered the Redemptorist Congregation at the age of 23 and came to the U.S. in 1845. He served as minister in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Louisiana, but having thus ruined his health, he left the order in 1852 and retired to the Trappist Abbey of Petit Clairvaux, Nova Scotia. "Here he became interested in the Micmacs, learned their language, studied their hieroglyphics, and obtained aid from influential friends and patrons in Austria to print the books" (Pilling). 5703 typefaces were especially cut. Only the first shipment of these books reached America, while the bulk perished en route in a shipwreck. - From the library of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, America's great early lyric poet, who appears to have had an interest in the Mi'kmaq, perhaps dating from his days as a student at Bowdoin College but certainly from when he began conceiving his epic poem "Evangeline" and its story of the Acadians of New Brunswick, who lived alongside and intermarried with the People. - This is the complete set of three works. The trio was issued in two versions: with all three works bound together and the Betrachtung full-paginated to p. 111, and as here, in two volumes, with the Katechismus and Betrachtung together (the latter having the final three leaves unpaginated) and the Gesangbuch separately. This is the first issue of the two-volume state. Extremely rare; no complete copy sold, according to auction records. - Some adhesion of old paper to the exteriors of the bindings. Internally clean and very attractive. - Owned by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82), annotated in his hand with "Micmac Language" on the recto of the frontispiece of the Gesangbuch and with "Micmac Language New Brunswick" on the recto of the frontispiece of the other volume. - Pilling, Algonquian, 275. Pilling, Proof-sheets, 2058 & 2059. Not in Evans, Masinahikan; not in Banks (rev. ed.), Books in Native Languages; not in Newberry Library, Ayer Indians.