{"id":44288,"date":"2023-02-07T06:06:37","date_gmt":"2023-02-07T14:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=44288"},"modified":"2023-02-07T06:08:29","modified_gmt":"2023-02-07T14:08:29","slug":"linguistic-notes-on-the-1843-letter-to-the-green-mountain-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2023\/02\/linguistic-notes-on-the-1843-letter-to-the-green-mountain-boys\/","title":{"rendered":"Linguistic notes on the 1843 letter to the Green Mountain Boys"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joseph Smith\u2019s 1843 appeal to the Green Mountain Boys, ghostwritten by W. W. Phelps and published in (the original) Times and Seasons<\/a><\/em> contains a series of foreign language quotations that are interesting not only because they include using the GAEL as a source for Egyptian.The best study of the quotations is Sam Brown\u2019s article<\/a> \u201cThe Translator and the Ghostwriter: Joseph Smith and W. W. Phelps\u201d in Journal of Mormon History<\/em> 34 (2008). I have a few comments to add to Sam\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how the foreign language quotations begin:<\/p>\n

Were I a Chaldean I would exclaim: Keed\u2019nauh ta-meroon le-hoam elauhayauh dey-shemayauh veh aur\u2019kau lau gnaubadoo, yabadoo ma-ar\u2019gnau oomeen tehoat shemayauh allah. (Thus shall ye say unto them: The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens.) An Egyptian, Su-e-eh-ni; (What other persons are those?) A Grecian, Diabolos bassileuei; (The Devil reigns.) A Frenchman, Messieurs sans Dieu; (Gentlemen without God.) A Turk, Ain shems; (The fountain of light.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In his notes, Sam points out that the Chaldean (Aramaic) quotation, taken from Jeremiah 10:11<\/a>, one of the known Aramaic Bible verses, is largely correct; the Egyptian word is from the GAEL<\/a>; and the Greek and the French are generally correct. For the Turkish, Sam suggests a reference to the Alevi religious festival ayini cem<\/em>, which he glosses as \u201ca gathering of ritual music,\u201d but the actual explanation is much dumber: Ain shems<\/em> isn\u2019t Turkish. It\u2019s the Arabic words \"shams\"<\/a> \"ain\"<\/a> \/?ayn \u0161ams\/, \u201ceye\/fountain of the sun\u201d (with similar words and synonymy in Hebrew, with a close but not quite as exact phonetic fit; a real Semiticist should weigh in). Ain Shams is also an Egyptian university<\/a> and a suburb of Cairo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sam identifies two additional phrases that are still a mystery:<\/p>\n

A Syrian, Zaubok; (Sacrifice!)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A Polander: Nav-yen-shoo bah pon na Jesu Christus; (Blessed be the name of Jesus Christ.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Zaubok<\/em> doesn\u2019t give us much to go on. It\u2019s\u00a0 probably another case for the Semiticists. Navyenshoo bah pon na <\/em>doesn\u2019t scan in Polish, but it looks kinda Slavic-ish. Suggestions are welcome; just keep in mind that the language may not be Polish or closely related to Polish, and the meaning may differ somewhat from \u201cBlessed be the name.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s this:<\/p>\n

A western Indian: She-mo-kah she-mo-keh teh ough-ne-gah. (The white man, O the white man, he very uncertain.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sam Brown notes that the phrase has been identified as Lenape, and I think that\u2019s plausible. Sam cites 1857 correspondence from the Belgian Jesuit Pierre de Smet, published in 1859 in Pr\u00e9cis Historiques<\/em> 188<\/a>, where a similar phrase is glossed in French:<\/p>\n

O Shemoka, Shemoka, ugh nega! O Blanc, \u00f4 Blanc, tu as \u00e9t\u00e9 bien injuste \u00e0 notre \u00e9gard! (\u201cO white man, o white man, you have been very unfair to us\u201d)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We\u2019re clearly dealing with a closely related version of the same phrase. But de Smet was writing15 years after Phelps, and oddly enough also wrote about the founding of the Church, the Mormon pioneers and their struggles with the U.S. government. Could the phrase simply have been transmitted from Phelps via writings about the early Church to de Smet?<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t seem to be the case. \u201cThe white man is very uncertain\u201d as purported Native American (and less often, enslaved African American or African) speech shows up in various nineteenth-century America sources. Let\u2019s just say that most of these aren\u2019t the finest moments of nineteenth-century American literature.<\/p>\n

In 1828, the New York Mirror and Ladies Literary Gazette<\/em><\/a> printed a story with the line, \u201cBut white man very uncertain<\/em>, as the Indians say.\u201d An 1836 article in the same source<\/a> about the theater again referred to the \u201cIndian saying \u2018white man very uncertain.\u2019\u201d An 1839 publication from Iowa<\/a> likewise states of one person that \u201che is like the Indian\u2019s White Man, very uncertain.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, there are a number of cases of shemoka<\/em> used as purported Native American speech to mean \u201cwhite man.\u201d An 1881 History of Lee County<\/em> (Illinois)<\/a> states that local Indians had referred to a Mr. Kelsey as a \u201cgood shemoka man,\u201d while a Mr. Griggs was a \u201c\u2018shemoka squaw ishnoba,\u2019 no good.\u201d An 1889 Portrait and Biographical Album of Louisa County, Iowa<\/em><\/a>, some 100 miles to the southwest of Lee County and 45 miles north of Nauvoo, states that the Indians \u201cgave to Mr. Higbee the name of \u2018Good Shemoka Man,\u2019 meaning good white man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does this purported Native American phrase have any basis in reality? I think so, although a specialist in Algonquian languages would be a better judge. John Heckewelder\u2019s Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations<\/em><\/a> reports that the Mohicans \u201ccalled the whites by way of derision, Schwannack<\/em>, which signifies salt beings<\/em>, or bitter beings<\/em>; for in their language the word Schwan<\/em>, is in general applied to things that have a salt, sharp, bitter, or sour taste\u201d (131). Heckewelder\u2019s Lenape vocabulary likewise includes the phrases chelook schw\u00e1nnakwak<\/em>, glossed as \u201cmany white people,\u201d and Mattapew\u00edwak nik schwannakwak<\/em>, \u201cthe white people are a rascally set of beings\u201d (463). Phonetically, shemoka<\/em> is too similar to Schwannack<\/em> to be dismissed as coincidence.<\/p>\n

To return to the glossing of She-mo-kah she-mo-keh teh ough-ne-gah<\/em> as \u201cThe white man, O the white man, he very uncertain\u201d: There is some basis for attributing at least the word shemokah<\/em> to actual Native American language, although at least that one word and the longer gloss were broadly known to white Americans in the nineteenth century and knowing them would not have required deep research into Native American languages or interaction with Native Americans themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joseph Smith\u2019s 1843 appeal to the Green Mountain Boys, ghostwritten by W. W. Phelps and published in (the original) Times and Seasons contains a series of foreign language quotations that are interesting not only because they include using the GAEL as a source for Egyptian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":44171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2910,2885],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-history","category-joseph-smith","category-language-and-literature"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/bofa-e1673931852401.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44288"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44294,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44288\/revisions\/44294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}