“Das Gebet des Herrn” (the Lord’s Prayer) in both German and Cherokee!
It’s really amazing what you can find on YouTube these days! In the course of researching some final touches to my forthcoming eBook about my paternal ancestors, I found a video (below) of Rick Keener’s recent visit to the cabin (and church) of a descendant of my German Reform/Lutheran sechster Urgroßvater — sixth great Grandfather—apparently by his first wife (I am descended from his second wife).
In 1850, Rev. Ulrich Keener was appointed to teach at what would later become Cherokee United Methodist Church. According to Lynda Gibbs, who has been documenting the Ellis and Keener family connections online, Ulrich was the brother of Joseph “Joe” Keener. Joe and Ulrich were both made Master Masons in Asheville, North Carolina in 1853, and Ulrich apparently wrote a number of books on theology. His biography indicates that he “had the honor and the privilege of breaking the bread of life to these red men of the forest” but was “argumentative and didactic in style as a preacher” and “sometimes rose to the limits of pathos and eloquence.” His Bruder (brother), Joe, would eventually sell land back to the Cherokee for the formation of their reservation in Western North Carolina.
“The Church has done nothing for these Indians beyond furnishing them with circuit preaching.” — Bishop William Capers’ formal message to the Tennessee Annual Conference in 1850.
According to the church’s website, the school was established for the “benefit of the remnants of the Cherokee and Catawba Indians within the borders of the [Tennessee Methodist] Conference” after a after a series of forced removals of Native American nations from their ancestral homelands (the Trail of Tears) by the first Democrat in the White House. And you can still visit the church today and hear das Gebet des Herrn (the Lord’s Prayer) in Cherokee — or listen to it starting at the 4:45 mark in Rick Keener’s video.
“The log cabin home of pioneer missionary Ulrich Keener serves as a store for selling Indian handcrafts. The church buys crafts from the Indians at market price, or a little above, and sells at market price, or a little below. Selling crafts to the Mission is a relatively important source of income for 15–20 families. It is not an important source of income for the church. The income from sales of crafts goes into a kind of revolving fund which is used to again purchase crafts for the next year. Perhaps the major value of the Craft Shop is in public relations. Purchasing some craft item gives visitors a feeling of identification with the Indians, and a talking point when they get back home.” — Report on the Cherokee Indian Mission by the Board of Missions of The United Methodist Church (1959).
In German, das Gebet des Herrn translates literally as the “Prayer” (Gebet) of the “Mister” (Herrn — the genitive singular of Herr). Herr is apparently from the 1650s and originally meant “nobler, superior” (Middle High German herre) or “noble, worthy, exalted” (Old High German herro), according to the Online Etymology Dictionary.
There are actually two different versions of the Lord’s Prayer in the Bible: in Matthew 6:9–13 and in Luke 11:2–4. You can probably find German readings of both on YouTube, as well as makeshift “humanist” versions in the AA forum on Reddit. :)
The Methodist faith spread to western North Carolina under the leadership of such men as Bishop Francis Asbury, who began to preach in the French Broad Valley in 1800; and Rev. Ulrich Keener, who came here in 1829 at the age of twenty…Rev. Keener, who was born in Tennessee in 1809, came here in 1829 to preach to the Cherokee and the few white settlers. While here he also taught school in Macon County. At the time of his death he was in charge of the old Echota Mission at Cherokee. — Galax News (Highlands, N.C.), June 24, 1965.
If you enjoyed this post, please click the heart to recommend it. You might also like my eBook…
