Eight Mohican Moravian Hymns

This little hymnal represents the collaborative efforts of eighteenth-century Mohicans from the community of Shekomeko, New York and German Moravian missionaries who lived among them. It also represents a twenty-first-century collaboration between members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community in Bowler, Wisconsin, including composer Brent Michael Davids and the congregation of the Lutheran-affiliated Church of the Wilderness, and Rachel Wheeler (historian) and Sarah Eyerly (musicologist). Additional collaborators included linguist Chris Harvey and students at the Florida State University. Together, we produced modern editions of hymns in the Mohican language in two different versions: reconstructions of the eighteenth-century harmonies preserved in Moravian archival records, and modernized arrangements by Brent Michael Davids, adapted for use by contemporary congregations.

The eight hymns in this volume are selected from several small pamphlets of Native language hymns housed in the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Some of the Mohican language verses have accompanying lines of translation in German or English, and all of the verses have an indication of the German chorale tune that would have been used to sing the texts in the eighteenth century. While the chorale tunes were in common usage among eighteenth-century Moravian communities, the majority of the Mohican texts were unique creations. Some of the hymn texts preserved in the Moravian Archives are attributed to Mohican authors, including the hymn “Paquaik assanaik [Strong Wounds],” making them among the earliest known Mohican authored texts. In addition, many of the hymn texts speak to the particular issues and concerns of Mohicans affiliated with the Moravian Church in the 1740s.

To select the eight hymns here, we chose those for which we could identify the chorale tune, thus providing a historical basis for the music that would have been used to sing the texts in eighteenth-century Moravian communities. To sing these hymns in the present, Grammy-winning Stockbridge Mohican musician, Bill Miller, has also created new renderings of several hymns, beginning with “Jesu paschgon kia [Jesus, To You Alone],” and continuing with additional Mohican authored texts.