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SENECA.
THE
Iroquois languages are less soft and
flowing than the Algonquin-Lenape, but
are characterised
by their masculine and sonorous articulations. To the Iroquois family
belongs the Seneca, a language
spoken by one of the six nations, whose original seat was in the province of
New York. The Senecas
are now dispossessed of their ancient territories, but they still own some
reservations in Western New
York, on Cataraugus Creek, and on Buffalo Creek; and a few of them reside in
Ohio. According to
the "Ne laguhnigoagesgwathah" (Mental
Elevator), a Seneca miscellany of religious and general
information, conducted by the mies., the total population of all the Senecas
in New York, in
1845, was 2630; in 1846, 2720;--denoting an increase of births over deaths in
one year of ninety souls.
The
Gospel of St.
Luke has been translated into the
Seneca tongue by T. S. Harris, of the
American Board, aided by a Seneca young man educated at the mission-school;
an edition of 500
copies was printed at New York, in 1829, for the American Bible Society.
An edition of 500 copies
of the Sermon on the Mount, in
Seneca, has also been printed by the American Tract Society. Except
the Mohawk, no translation has
been made into any other Iroquois language. A translation,
ostensibly
in Oneida, of the English Prayer Book has been
effected by the Rev. Solomon Davis, my. to
the Oneidas, at Duck Creek, Wisconsin; but this translation, though
intelligible to the people of his
charge, is not written in pure Oneida, nor indeed in any dialect ever spoken
by the six nations. It is
well known that the Iroquois languages so closely resemble each other, that
the tribes to whom they
are respectively vernacular are able to converse together. The Mohawk and Seneca versions, being thus
more or less accessible to all the Iroquois nations, supply the place of
translations in the other Iroquois
languages." --The Bible of Every Land. (1860, Second Edition)
Samuel Bagster [Info only]
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