Oneida Hymn Book Onayodaaga Deyelihwahgwata
1941, Oneida, Wisconsin. Appears to be a typescript, bound in buckram, no pagination. Old water damage inside covers and to flyleaves, but not to contents. Eight and a half inches by five and a half inches. Rare historical work.
The following is excerpted from a news article from The University of Wisconsin-Madison News, 1999:
Professor Morris Swadesh of UW–Madison originated the Oneida Project in 1938. It was supported by the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), one of the New Deal efforts to pull America out of the Great Depression.
The Oneida Project, which began in January 1939, supported more than a dozen Oneida while they wrote these accounts in their previously unwritten language and then translated them into English. In late 1940 and 1941, many accounts were written directly in English.
At the time, Oneida was in danger of linguistic extinction, due partly to efforts at government-subsidized schools to punish Indian students who spoke their native language. One woman recounted that she had been reprimanded for speaking Oneida in school by having “a rag tied around my mouth all one day.”
The Oneida people who participated in the WPA project produced detailed accounts of Oneida life covering roughly the period 1900-1940. They included autobiographies, recipes (e.g. Iroquois corn soup) and descriptions of farming, hunting, relationships with whites, boarding school education, politics, religion and childbirth. The project also produced an Oneida orthography and hymnal.
The Oneida Project was unique in WPA. Other efforts to record and preserve elements of minority cultures had whites interview Indians or blacks. But the Oneida Project had Oneida people do the interviewing and the writing.
Though Swadesh proposed the project, he left Wisconsin just as it was about to begin. So he enlisted one of his star undergraduates, Floyd Lounsbury of Waukesha, Wis., to carry out the program.
Out of the initial sessions with the Oneida speakers, Lounsbury developed a 19-letter written alphabet.
Professor Morris Swadesh of UW–Madison originated the Oneida Project in 1938. It was supported by the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), one of the New Deal efforts to pull America out of the Great Depression.