Mi’kmaq pictographic script: one of the few surviving sets, owned by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[Mi’kmaq script. - Kauder, Christian]. Buch das gut, enthaltend den Katechismus, Betrachtung. [With:] Buch das gut, enthaltend den Gesang.

€ 18.500,00

Only edition of the Christian catechism, meditations and hymnal for the Mi'kmaq, a First Nations People of Nova Scotia, printed in their hieroglyphic writing (also known as Suckerfish script): the first and long the only books ever published in this writing developed by the French Jesuit Chretien Leclercq in the 17th century, apparently based on an existing pre-conquest native script.

The publication was brought about through the efforts of the Luxembourgian missionary Christian Kauder (1817-77), achieved from ideographic type cast expressly for this purpose in Vienna. Kauder had entered the Redemptorist Congregation at the age of 23 and came to the U.S. in 1845. He served as minister in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Louisiana, but having thus ruined his health, he left the order in 1852 and retired to the Trappist Abbey of Petit Clairvaux, Nova Scotia. "Here he became interested in the Micmacs, learned their language, studied their hieroglyphics, and obtained aid from influential friends and patrons in Austria to print the books" (Pilling). 5703 typefaces were especially cut. Only the first shipment of these books reached America, while the bulk perished en route in a shipwreck.

From the library of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, America's great early lyric poet, who appears to have had an interest in the Mi’kmaq, perhaps dating from his days as a student at Bowdoin College but certainly from when he began conceiving his epic poem "Evangeline" and its story of the Acadians of New Brunswick, who lived alongside and intermarried with the People.

This is the complete set of three works. The trio was issued in two versions: with all three works bound together and the Betrachtung full-paginated to p. 111, and as here, in two volumes, with the Katechismus and Betrachtung together (the latter having the final three leaves unpaginated) and the Gesangbuch separately. This is the first issue of the two-volume state. Extremely rare; no complete copy sold, according to auction records.