In Front | Workbook: The Cherokee Bible Translation, Part 2

The chapter he chose was John 3, the chapter containing the famous passage in verse 16 NIV:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

This chapter was copied many hundred times and soon after, the rest of the New Testament was completed by two more Cherokees, David Brown and George Lowry. These translations represented “the first time in history an evangelized people were reading the New Testament translated by their own kinsmen, into their own language, using a writing system developed, refined, and popularized entirely as their own.”

While this story of a good translation strategy is heart-warming, the sad reality is that a good translation without a good witness can damage the gains of evangelism. The history of Native American tribal groups and the Christian faith has been marred by oppression and abuse. Many equate the good news of the Christian Bible as propaganda for those seeking their submission.

Sources: George E. Foster, Se-quo-yah, the American Cadmus and Modern Moses, 1885, pp. 120-121;
Pamela Jean Owens, “Bible Translation and Language Preservation: The Politics of the Nineteenth Century Cherokee Bible Translation Projects,” The Bible Translator 57, no. 1, p. 8 (January 2006). Accessed April 6, 2017. 

http://www.ubs-translations.org/fileadmin/publications/tbt/technical/TBT_TP_Jan06_Owens.pdf.