Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Steinhauer, Henry Bird

STEINHAUER, Henry Bird, Canadian clergyman, b. in the Ramah Indian settlement, Lake Simcoe, Ontario, in 1804; d. at Whitefish Lake, Northwest territory, Canada, 29 Dec., 1885. He was a pure-blooded Chippewa Indian, and received his name of Steinhauer from a German family that adopted and educated him. He accompanied the Rev. John Evans, a Methodist missionary, to the northwest in 1840, and settled at Norway House, where he remained until 1855, and made himself useful to the missionaries as an interpreter. He assisted Mr. Evans in inventing and perfecting the Cree syllabic characters, in which nearly all books in the Indian languages are printed in the northwest. He also translated into Cree the Old Testament from the book of Job to the end of the lesser prophets, and most of the New Testament. He was ordained a minister in 1858, and lived at Whitefish Lake.