Three worlds collide in this artifact: a 1645 Hebrew Lexicon, printed in the religiously divided city of Basel, owned by an 18th-century missionary in New Jersey, and bound in the hand-painted skin of an otter by a Native American artisan whose name was once known, like of the Lenape people. The otter skin is a fragment repurposed from another item. This book tells a story of intercultural encounters, colonization, and the complexities of book history.
The missionary who owned this book was David Brainerd (1718-1747), an evangelical Presbyterian who briefly lived among the Lenape until his death from tuberculosis. Brainerd briefly attended Yale University but was expelled for her fervent support of the evangelical preacher George Whitefield. He became a missionary, first preaching to the Mohican community in Kaunameek (New York), then to a Lenape community in Crossweeksung (New Jersey). The Hebrew lexicon represents longstanding Protestant interest in exegetical Biblical study and translation. It represents Brainerd’s dedication to his calling; it also accompanied to Indian Country, witnessing the complex interactions between the missionary and his host communities as Mohican and Lenape people decided whether the Christian faith he preached was of interest to them. Following Brainerd’s death in 1747, the book passed down through the family of renowned minister Jonathan Edwards, whose teenage daughter Jerusha Edwards nursed Brainerd on his deathbed. Edwards subsequently memorialized Brainerd in an influential 1749 publication, An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd. Edwards became the president of Princeton University, and his family donated it to the university in 1907.
The otter skin cover is adorned with intricate geometric patterns characteristic of Lenape artistry. The exact circumstances of the cover’s creation by the Lenape artisan are unknown. The date of this modification is still being determined, but evidence suggests it occurred during the eighteenth century. Perhaps a Christian convert at Crossweeksung expressed interest in the book, and Brainerd lent it out; the lending and exchanging of books and other textual objects was common for missionary work, in which promoting literacy was an important component of proselytizing. Members of Native communities recognized the value placed on books and sought to harness–or rebuff–their power as sacred objects or as materials to exchange. In this case, the otter skin cover not only projected the fragile pages of the text but also represented the resilience and adaptability of both Anglo-American and Lenape cultures in the face of change. The book’s journey from Brainerd’s missionary work to becoming a private Edwards “family heirloom” to its donation to Princeton highlights the power dynamics of extraction, domination, and survivance typical of the colonial (and, in the twentieth-century, imperial) eras.
We received permission from the Lenape tribe to use this image for educational purposes. The otter skin Hebrew lexicon and its history represent the themes of American Contact. Many authors in this book examine how Indigenous books and objects came to be held in private collections, the ethics and process of repatriation, and the circulation of tribal objects outside their communities.
The catalog entry for this item can be found here: https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/9925365973506421
