A DICTIONARY OF THE CHOCTAW 



LANGUAGE 



By Cyrus Btington 



EDITED BY 



John R. Swanton and Henry S. Halbert 



INTRODUCTION 



By John R. Swanton 



This dictionary represents a portion of the results of nearly fifty 

 years of missionary service among the Choctaw Indians on the part of 

 its compiler, Rev. Cyrus Byington. Mr. Byington was also the 

 author of translations into Choctaw of several books of both the Old 

 and the New Testament, Choctaw almanacs," a Choctaw definer, a 

 grammar of the Choctaw language, and some minor writings. His 

 grammar, edited by Dr. D. G. Brinton, was published in Philadel- 

 phia in 1871, in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 

 (vol. 11, pp. 317-367). In the introduction to this grammar Dr. 

 Brinton gives the following account of the author's life: 



This eminent scholar and missionary, whose name is inseparably connected with 

 the later history of the Choctaw nation, was born at Stockbridge, Berkshire County, 

 Mass., March 11, 1793. He was one of nine children, and his parents were in hum- 

 ble circumstances, but industrious and respected. His father was at one time a tan- 

 ner, and subsequently a small farmer. Necessarily, therefore, his early education 

 was limited. 



When a well-grown lad he was taken into the family of Mr. Joseph Woodbridge, 

 of his native town, from whom he received some instruction in Latin and Greek, and 

 with whom he afterward read law. In 1814 he was admitted to the bar, and prac- 

 ticed a few years with success in Stockbridge and Sheffield, Mass. 



His father though a moral was not a religious man, and it seems to have been only 

 after he reached manhood that Mr. Byington became, as he expressed it, "a subject 

 of divine grace." He then resolved to forsake the bar and devote himself to mis- 

 sionary life. With this object in view he entered the theological school at Andover, 

 Mass., where he studied Hebrew and theology, and was licensed to preach, Septem- 

 ber, 1819. At this time he hoped to go to the Armenians in Turkey. But Provi- 

 dence had prepared for him another and an even more laborious field. 



For about a year he preached in various churches in Massachusetts, awaiting some 

 opportunity for missionary labor. Toward the close of the summer of 1819, a com- 

 pany of 20 or 25 persons left Hampshire County, Mass., under the direction of 

 the American Board of Missions, to go by land to the Choctaw nation, then 



VII 



