180 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 196 



of Vinita, Okla., grandson of Lucy Lowrey Hoyt, removed all doubt 

 as to the identity of Wahnenauhi. 



Maj. George Lowrey (1770?-1852), of whom Wahnenauhi writes 

 with obvious affection, was her maternal grandfather. Pilling 

 (1888, p. 186), quoting Rev. Samuel A. Worcester (1798-1859) whose 

 missionary endeavors were strongly supported by Lowrey, states : 



He [Lowrey 1 was one of the Cherokee delegation, headed by the distinguished 

 John Watts, who visited President Washington at Philadelphia in 1791 or 1792. 

 He was one of the captains of light horse companies that were appointed to 

 enforce the laws of the nation in 1808 and 1810. He was a member of the national 

 committee, organized in 1814. He was one of the delegation who negotiated 

 the treaty of 1819 at Washington City. He was a member of the convention 

 that framed the constitution of the nation in 1827; and also that of 1839. He 

 was elected assistant principal chief under the constitution in 1828; which office 

 he filled many years. At the time of his death he was a member of the executive 

 council. 



He always took a lively interest in the translation of the scriptures into the 

 Cherokee language, in which work he rendered important aid. One of his written 

 addresses on temperance has been for several years [prior to 1852] in circulation 

 as a tract in the Cherokee language. 



Major Lowrey collaborated with the brilliant young Cherokee 

 classical scholar, David Brown (?-1829), the husband of his third 

 daughter, Rachel, in making what has been stated as being the first 

 translation of the New Testament into Cherokee, but what was very 

 probably a translation of the Four Gospels only. This accompHsh- 

 ment was completed on September 27, 1825. Chapters 2-27 of the 

 Gospel of St. Matthew from this pioneer translation were published 

 in the "Cherokee Phoenix" (April 3 to July 29, 1829) (Pilling, 1888, 

 p. 111). At least a part of the definitive translation of the New Tes- 

 tament was based on the Brown-Lowrey version. 



Major Lowrey served as head of the temperance organization 

 among the Cherokee in Georgia. The tract, referred to above, was 

 issued at Park Hill in two editions, 1842 and 1855 (Hargrett, 1951, 

 pp. 18, 60). 



The mother of Wahnenauhi, Lydia, the second daughter of Major 

 Lowrey and his wife, Lucy Benge, has passed into the folklore of the 

 Cherokee people. At the age of 16, while a student at Brainerd 

 Mission, she was converted to Chiistianity and baptized on January 3, 

 1819. "Soon afterwards she had a dream in which the words [of an 

 original hymn] came to her so impressively that on arising in the morn- 

 ing she wrote them out as the first hymn written by a Cherokee" 

 (Starr, 1921, p. 249). Since the Sequoyah syllabary was not perfected 

 until 1821, one wonders whether Lydia's hymn were in English or in 

 some phonetic system. In either event, it is still sung by her tribes- 

 men. It is to be found on pages 17-18 of the American Baptist 



