By Corinna Dally-Starna
This is the first article of a two-part series. In our winter newsletter, Ms. Dally-Starna, a scholar and author, will continue her discussion of the Moravian Records by presenting some of her findings on the American Indian people and communities in the Housatonic Valley of Connecticut for the period from 1747 to 1763. The author is also one of the presenters at a two-day history conference at the MPMRC on September 20-21. Visit www.mashantucket.com for a schedule of the talks.
Talking over a pizza during a visit to the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation in 1993, I mentioned to Kevin McBride, current MPMRC Director of Research, my plans to learn the German script, an old form of writing. I intended to combine this skill with my background in history and facility with the German language in a study of the Palatine German immigrants of upstate New York. This idea, however, was quickly swept aside by Kevin's suggestion that I consider translating the diaries kept by Moravian missionaries while among the Indian people of western Connecticut.
Through the initiative of Theresa H. Bell, MPMRC Executive Director, and with the added interest of Dr. Jack Campisi, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation has funded the translation of these mission diaries on and off since 1994. The principal objective of this undertaking is to make the Moravian Records accessible to the MPMRC staff to assist in the interpretation of Native history and culture. At the same time, once the records are accessioned, the museum's library will be the only repository holding complete translations of these historically and ethnographically valuable documents. This project of translating, and also annotating the Moravian Records, is approaching completion.
The materials being translated consist of approximately 1,200 microfilmed pages from the Records of the Moravian Missions Among the Indians of North America, housed in the archives of the Moravian Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Covering the period from 1747 to 1763, their contents deal primarily with the Moravian mission station at Pachgatgoch, or Schaghticoke, near Kent, Connecticut, and to a limited extent with Wechquadnach (Gnadensee), a small community formerly in the vicinity of present-day Indian Pond in Sharon, Connecticut.
Arriving in Georgia from the German state of Saxony in 1735, the Moravians first began their preaching of the gospel to the Creeks. Five years later, in 1740, missionary efforts were undertaken at Shekomeko, an Indian village about two miles south of Pine Plains in Dutchess County, New York. From there the Moravians became active in Connecticut.
Researchers interested in the Native history of this part of New England know about the Moravian Records and, to some degree, have used them. However, they have done so selectively, mostly by using the English language index compiled by the Reverend Carl John Fliegel, Research Assistant at the Archives of the Moravian Church until 1961. Understandably, this approach provides a very limited and incomplete view of the period. Indeed, even translated excerpts from the records convey only part of the story. What may discourage many researchers from pulling together the amount of information necessary to frame the larger picture, is the time and effort required to read the original documents. Making sense of eighteenth-century German script, and then the language itself, can be frustrating.
Translating manuscripts dating back some 250 years poses a number of challenges. First, a transcript of the original document has to be prepared. This requires deciphering the German script, with its distinctively formed characters, and then copying the text in Latin script, that is, the writing system used by English speakers. Of course, as with English language documents of the period, the handwriting of some of the Moravians is more difficult to read than that of others. The quality of the writing tools-quill and paper-also affected the appearance of the manuscripts, as did the time available to a writer to complete his task and the situation in which he performed it. Complicating matters is the deterioration of and damage to the documents before they could be properly archived and microfilmed. As if in anticipation of this problem, one of the Moravians asked that bound, blank writing paper be sent to the mission to help prevent sheets of paper from being scattered about and, as he put it, taking on "the color of the fireplace."
A reader must also contend with the irregular spellings found in these documents. Factors such as the level of education a Moravian had and the region in Europe he was from influenced his writing. For example, what is "normally" presumed to be a "g" sound can be found written as a "k"; a "t" as a "d"; or a "b" as a "p." Thus, "Buddel," German for 'bottle', appears as "puddel"; "Gott" ('God') as "Kott"; "rührte" ('stirred') as "rierde"; and "dachte" ('thought') as "tachte." Especially challenging are words describing items with which a Moravian had little familiarity. Interesting phonetic renderings of the English language-that is, words that were written in the way they sounded to the diarist's ear-are the result. "Clapboard" becomes "klabbort"; "grandchild" is rendered "grendt schei[d]"; "pie" is "pay"; "hot" is "hat"; "gentleman" is "schentelman"; "sweet corn" is "schwit corn"; and "Farmington" appears as "Vermenthaun," to mention only a few. Needless to say, a certain amount of imagination and an open mind are a must.
Preparing the translation, like the transcription, is a bit like doing detective work. To investigate a word's meaning of more than two centuries ago, while getting a handle on the historical context in which the document was produced, and interpreting texts virtually devoid of punctuation, are trying, yet fascinating tasks. Dictionaries are the translator's first resource, to be sure. But equally important is access to a wide range of experts familiar with the various aspects of the subject matter at hand. While it is not always possible to extract the meaning behind each and every sentence, or the author's intent in writing it, it is the translator's aim to produce an English language rendering of a document that is comprehensible, accurate, and in keeping with the linguistic texture of the original.
The great importance of the Moravian records lies in their uniqueness. They are the most extensive known eye-witness account of the Indian people of western Connecticut in the first half of the eighteenth century. That the Moravians, to a large extent, reported on only what they thought worthwhile, is an unfortunate but not unexpected drawback. Still, their diaries illuminate many aspects of Native lifeways: the crops that were planted, the foods that were eaten, the homes that were built, what was hunted and fished, and what goods were produced and traded. But more than that, the writings of the Moravians afford us an unusually intimate view of real people, and the familiar routine of human existence: life and death, joy and sorrow, hardship and plenty. They tell an otherwise untold story.
Corinna Dally-Starna, a native of Bremen, Germany, holds a B.A. in History, and a B.S. and M.S. in Social Studies Education from the State University of New York, College at Oneonta. She is the co-author of "American Indians and Moravians in Southern New England," appearing in Germans and Indians: Fantasies, Encounters, Projections, edited by Colin G. Calloway, Gerd Gemünden, and Susanne Zantop (University of Nebraska Press, 2002).
Click here to read Part 2.
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