A Note on Cherokee Theological Concepts

On this account, we find ourselves hindered from getting them to say properly in their Language, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Would you judge it fitting, while waiting a better expression, to substitute instead, in the name of our Father, and of his son, and of their holy ghost? (Thwaites 1847:117,119). The notes of Bre'beuf's private agony are, of course, illustrative of the flagrant ethnocentricism of his day. What these early missionaries were slow to appreciate is the enormous semantic chasm which existed between the two races. In order to grasp the strange Indo-European concepts being imposed on them (e.g. the strangely worded official language of diplomatic treaties, the special jargon used by traders, and the alien theological concepts preached by zealous missionaries), the indigenous people of the Americas not only had to produce subtle phonetic changes in their languages but also had to make profound phenomenological accommodations in their metaphysical belief systems. To create a literate Native audience, much of the missionary activity in North America, from the seventeenth century onward, focused on producing written forms of liturgy which could be used to educate Indian converts about Christian terminology and doctrine. Though nothing in North America was produced which could be considered comparable to the celebrated Testerian manuscripts of sixteenth-century Mexico ( the catechism books created by the Franciscan fathers in a pictographic-rebus format thought to be compatible to the ancient painted screenfold traditions of their Native converts [see Otomi' catechism m.s., 1968]); nevertheless, an enormous

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