The Global Bible project is focussing on three case study regions: the Arctic, Australia and Oceania and West Africa. This blog relates to missions to the Inuit people of the Arctic. After the defeat of the United Kingdom of Denmark Norway in the Napoleonic wars, the British and Foreign Bible Society was more actively involved in supporting and publishing translations into the Inuit languages of Greenland and British North America.
In 1821, English readers were encouraged by remarkable news from the Moravian missions in Labrador. In their ‘Monthly Extracts’, the Bible Society reported that the Moravian missionaries in Okkak, Labrador, August 8, 1821, thanked the Society for the ‘valuable present of more copies of the New Testament in the Esquimaux language’ (Latrobe 1821). From Nain, there was a report of an even more practical and enthusiastic reception. Brother Benjamin Kohlmeister (1756-1844), wrote that ‘several of our Esquimaux’ had decided ‘of their own accord’ to make a collection of seal blubber for the Society (Kohlmeister 1821: 103). Some brought whole seals, others smaller sections in the name of their children. Having received their own version of the Bible, they now wished to see the work continued for peoples elsewhere.
They begged me to send this collection of blubber (yielding 30 gallons of oil) to those generous friends who printed the Bibles for them, that more heathen might be presented with that book ‘so precious above all things.’
Kohlmeister’s letter was soon copied by other evangelical journals (Christian Observer 1821: 787) as a particularly pleasing response to the British and Foreign Bible Society which had funded and shipped the ‘Esquimaux Bible’ to the Moravian missions in North America.
At one level, the Moravian report is a strong indication of the agency of the new Moravian Christians in Newfoundland. It also reflected the ethos of the Bible Society, which discouraged the gratuitous distribution of Bibles, even among the very poor, in favour of a subscription. In England, a local committee (Dudley 1821: 412) reported, ‘The readiness of the poor to make their periodical payments is most gratifying.’ The Bible was a privilege to be earned, not imposed or given away without recognition of its cost.
The Global Bible project is examining how the extension of these principles impacts on the translation of the Bible among non-literate peoples in areas of expanding European colonisation. For the Inuit people of Greenland, this meant encounters mediated through missionaries from German lands, especially Lutherans and Moravians. Moravians were also active in British North America and in Newfoundland they secured more or less exclusive access to trade and proselytise the local people. As traders, the Moravians were the catalyst for dramatic changers in the economy of the Inuit peoples of the North.
Blubber was the medium of exchange, not just for Bibles but for the whole exchange economy.
As Brice Bennett (1990), the Moravians were traders and closely implicated in the commercialization of the arctic frontier. The Moravians created mission stations with an attached trade store, which allowed for the exchange of European items including weapons (though not initially), ironware, tobacco and other goods which were exchanged for seal oil, furs and Inuit artefacts, including carvings. For the Greenlanders, the principal tradable commodity was rendered fat from sea mammals, a product which had never formed part of the traditional economy.
For the Global Bible project, it is important to place the effort to translate the bible into the wider colonial context. While the new bible translations were undoubtedly received with enthusiasm, there were also hidden costs.
Research on this case study is ongoing and we are particularly interested in the way in which missionaries from German lands collaborated with British missionary and Bible societies beyond national and international boundaries.
References
Brice-Bennett, Carol. 1990. ‘Missionaries as Traders: Moravians and Labrador Inuit, 1771-1860’. In Merchant-Credit and Labour Strategies in Historical Perspective, ed. Rosemary E. Ommer (Fredericton, NB: Acadiensis Press).
Dudley, C.S. 1821. An Analysis of the System of the Bible Society (London: Watts). Google Books
Kohlmeister 1821. ‘Extract of a Letter from Brother Kohlmeister’. Periodical Accounts Relating to the Missions of the Church of the United Brethren 8: 103-4. Memorial University of Newfoundland DAI
Latrobe, Rev. C.J. 1821, ‘Labrador and Greenland’, Monthly Extracts from the Correspondence of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 17.52: 68-71