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News, events, updates, and tidbits from the Presbyterian Historical Society. Use tags to read related articles or sort by author for similar posts written by PHS staff members and volunteers.

Tillie Paul Tamaree & the Tlingit Community

September 17, 2020

Recently, we highlighted elder Tillie Paul Tamaree for our #HistoricalFigureFriday series on social media. She was the first Native American woman elected as a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

Before her election as elder in 1930, Tillie Paul worked as a translator, civil rights advocate, and missionary educator within the Tlingit community in the Pacific Northwest.

The Tlingit are indigenous peoples of that region. Their language is the Tlingit language in which the name means "People of the Tides."

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Author:

Sonia

Tags:

Native Americans, Womens History

First Presbyterian Church of Sacaton, Arizona

May 12, 2019

On March 25th, the Charles H. Cook Memorial Building of the First Presbyterian Church of Sacaton, Arizona burned to the ground. Authorities of the Gila River Indian Community soon arrested three suspects for arson. For one church elder, the fire was a reminder of...

Author:

David S

Tags:

Arizona, Native Americans

The “Problem” of Native American Church Membership

September 11, 2018

--by Jennifer Graber

Session minutes of the Anadarko Presbyterian Church, founded in Indian Territory in 1889, referred to the “problem” of Native American church membership on the very first page. Rev. Silas Fait, along with an elder, examined an “Indian named Emma.” Though she “accept[ed] Christ,” the leaders rejected Emma’s application as she maintained that Christ could not “interfere with her own gods.” In the follow-up notes, Rev. Fait worried that “great harm will come to the mission if care is not exercised...

Author:

Guest Blogger

Tags:

Scholar Research, Native Americans, Mission History, Oklahoma

Early American Bibles

November 20, 2017

Quick trivia question: what language was the first Bible in the Western Hemisphere printed in? The answer is Algonquin—to be precise, the Natick dialect of Algonquin.

Today you can find a “Made in the U.S.A.” Bible in nearly every hotel room in America; most Gideon Bibles, for example, are printed in the Nashville area. But Bible publishing in the

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Author:

David K

Tags:

Bible, Native Americans, American Revolution

Slavery, Labor, and Resistance in the Choctaw Nation

November 14, 2017

--by Nakia Parker

While investigating sources for a final paper in an undergraduate course on the American Civil War, I painfully discovered the history of American Indian participation in chattel slavery. Previously, I had viewed African Americans and Native Americans as identical comrades in the struggle against racism and oppression in this country. My desire to correct this thinking and contribute to the scholarship about the African American diaspora and the practice of chattel slavery in Southeastern Indian nations became the foundation for my current research...

Author:

Guest Blogger

Tags:

Scholar Research, Mission History, Native Americans

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Tillie Paul Tamaree & the Tlingit Community

First Presbyterian Church of Sacaton, Arizona

The “Problem” of Native American Church Membership

Early American Bibles

Slavery, Labor, and Resistance in the Choctaw Nation