Holy Childhood School Music Printing Blocks for hymns in Odawa, Ojibwa, and Latin

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While inventorying a large mixed format collection of a potential donor, my interns found music printing blocks. The blocks have typeset  lines of music and lyrics, and when printed in a printing press, created hymnals.  What is particularly interesting is these hymns are mostly in Ojibwa and Odawa, with some Latin for hymns like Panis Angelicus. The hymnal was used at the Holy Childhood School, Harbor Springs, MI. While I've seen printing blocks before, and we have some in our collection, they are for images printed in ads and blocks to print calling cards, not music. The printing block is a mirror image of how we would read it. It must be created this way for it to print so we can read it.  

These are atypical music printing blocks because of the language and the history of Holy Childhood. Built in 1829 with help from Odawa tribes, Holy Childhood School was open for a few years during which children learned lessons in their mother tongue, Anishinaabemowin. However, as federal policy moved towards assimilation education, Holy Childhood transformed into one of many abusive U.S. Indian Schools. To learn more about Holy Childhood see https://umsi580.lsait.lsa.umich.edu/s/indian-boarding-schools-in-michigan/page/holychildhood, which is part of a website about the three US Indian Boarding Schools in Michigan. The website was created after the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves of indigenous children at a Canadian boarding school.

The title of this hymn is Wi-Makawig Baiata-Diieg, and it appears in at least two Catholic hymnals with hymns in Ojibwa and Odawa and Latin. Here are two images from Anamie Misinaigin, published in Detroit in 1846. The hymn, lyrics only, are on p. 122-3, #5. 




The 1901 Anishinabe Negamod is digitized. The hymn as seen on the printing block is on p. 154. See it and other hymns in the book at  https://archive.org/details/anishinabenegamo00enge/page/154/mode/2up

I am hopeful that the donor will donate the music printing blocks to the Odawas of Harbor Springs. 

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