Words in the Word

An examination of mid-19th Century Potawatomi
as documented in
translations of the Gospels into the Potawatomi language by Jesuit missionaries,
compiled by Maurice Gailland, S.J.
and
the Gospel According to Matthew,
translated by Johnston Lykins.

Jesuit Gospel translations:
Sunday gospels
Feast day gospels
All excerpts from Matthew, in chapter/verse order
All excerpts from Luke, in chapter/verse order

As we progress with this study, we will add pages that give historical context to the translations, that compare the translations of specific passages, and that show how the Christian missionaries constructed words to express new religious and cultural concepts in the Potawatomi language.

For now, we will simply make available the Jesuit translation of passages from Matthew and Luke. Lykins' translation is located elsewhere on this site.

A passage from one of the gospels is read by the priest in the course of every Roman Catholic Mass. Father Gailland compiled these passages, which were probably translated by more than one of the Jesuit missionaries who worked in Indiana and Kansas, rather than the entire gospel, as found in the Bible. His work was never published. Father Gailland compiled two manuscripts:

In the Potawatomi text, letters in brackets could not be read with certainty. Words added to the English translation are enclosed in brackets.

The Jesuits constructed an elaborate orthography that utilized diacritical marks extensively. Father Gailland explained it in the Preface to his dictionary. We have adapted it for your reference; a link precedes each gospel list. Of course, in transcribing the Gospel translations to be read during the Mass, Gailland did not use all of the diacritical marks that he did in his dictionary, but it appears that he conformed to the system when he felt that help was needed for more difficult words.

Occasionally, more than one diacritical mark was associated with a single letter. In that event, the second diacritical mark follows the letter with which it is associated in the manuscript. Similarly, when the html symbol set used to construct these pages does not include the letter/diacritical mark combination, the diacritical mark is inserted after the letter. In chapter 22, verse 18, /enemê¨kasoýe¯g/ demonstrates both of these situations.

In the footnotes to these texts, we sometimes refer to a word as word, rather than to what it means. When we do, we precede and follow the word with the following symbol: /. For example, if we write about a four-legged barking pet, we write about our dog; but if we talk about the three letter word, you will read /dog/. The same convention is used for parts of words. Another example of this is in the preceding paragraph: /enemê¨kasoýe¯g/.

Here are the Gospel passages, as compiled by Maurice Gailland, S.J.