The Delaware Primers of Ira D. Blanchard

This book presents an edition of the three school primers in the Southern Unami dialect of the Delaware language (Lenape; ISO code unm) that were produced by the Baptist missionary Ira D. Blanchard in the years 1834 and 1842. Their short titles are: Linapi'e Lrkvekun (Blanchard 1834a), Linapie Lrkvekun (Blanchard 1834b) and The Delaware First Book (Blanchard [and Journeycake] 1842). Blanchard was aided by two bilingual young men, James Conner and Charles Journeycake.

The Delawares were at the time in a part of Indian Territory that is now eastern Kansas. The books were printed on a press at the nearby Shawnee mission. They were written entirely in Delaware and, as primers, were intended to teach reading to monolingual Delaware-speaking children. The language is written in a special alphabet devised by the printer Jotham Meeker that is long out of use, and the contents of the primers have been effectively inaccessible.

The lessons include warnings against drunkenness, Bible stories, the world around us, contemporary life, and the planned Indian state.

Also available from the editors are an edition of Blanchard and Conner's Delaware translation of a Harmony of the Gospels (1837-1839; Goddard 2021a), a Glossary to Blanchard's publications (Beckwith and Goddard 2021), and a Grammar of Southern Unami Delaware based on Blanchard's books and twentieth-century fieldwork with the last speakers (Goddard 2021b).

Southern Unami is the heritage language of the Delaware Tribe of Indians (Bartlesville, Okla.) and the Delaware Nation of Western Oklahoma (Anadarko).