Pavosto Zeoxchesenitotahaoez Luke na John nis Hevovistomosseon Jesus Christ = The Gospels of Luke and John Translated in the Cheyenne Language and Printed for the Interest of the Mennonite Mission Among the Cheyenne Indians

Berne, In: Witness Press, 1902. Very good plus.. [4],240pp. Original grey printed wrappers. Lightly toned. Internally clean. The scarce first edition of this translation of two gospels into the Cheyenne language for use by the Mennonite Mission near Canton, Oklahoma, where they also operated an Indian School. The author, Rodolphe Charles Petter, was a Swiss Mennonite, who immigrated to the United States in 1890 when in his mid-thirties for the express purpose of proselytizing the Native Americans. He spent a year at Oberlin College to learn English before arriving at the Cantonment Mennonite Indian School in 1891, where he spent the next twenty-five years as a teacher and missionary for the Cheyenne. In 1916, he left Oklahoma for Lame Deer, Montana, where he continued his activities among the Northern Cheyenne until his death in 1947. Petter's introduction to this work is written from the mission at Cantonment, and is dated August 1902, but the book was printed in Indiana on the press of the Berne Witness, a tri-weekly, bilingual newspaper for the Swiss and German immigrants who populated the town, and also served as the official printing house for the Mennonite Church in the United States in late-19th and early 20th centuries. Petter published numerous works of Cheyenne grammar and language during his lengthy career, including a massive English-Cheyenne dictionary; the present translation of the gospels of Luke and John is one of his earliest efforts.

Quite rare on the market, with no copies appearing in auction records, and in particularly nice condition. OCLC locates a handful of institutional copies, but the present work does not appear in the online catalogs of the Newberry (which has the second edition in the Ayer Collection) and several other major Indian Language collections.
Ayer, Cheyenne 4 (later ed.). (Inventory #: 5873)