WElias Boudinot was a writer, newspaper editor, and leader of the Cherokee Nation. He was a member of a prominent family, and was born and grew up in present-day Georgia. His Cherokee name reportedly means either 'male deer' or 'turkey.' Born to parents of mixed Cherokee and European ancestry and educated at a missionary school in Connecticut, Boudinot became one of several leaders who believed that acculturation was critical to Cherokee survival; he was influential in the period of removal to Indian Territory.
WHenry Budd, the first Native American ordained an Anglican priest, spent his career ministering to First Nations people.
WCockenoe was an early Native American translator from Long Island in New York where he was a member of the Montaukett. He helped to translate the earliest parts of the Eliot Indian Bible, the first Bible published in America.
WJohn Eliot was a Puritan missionary to the American Indians who some called "the apostle to the Indians" and the founder of Roxbury Latin School in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1645.
WPhilip James Elliot was a American Christian missionary, and was one of five killed during Operation Auca, an attempt to evangelize the Huaorani people of Ecuador.
WJohn Horden was the first Anglican Bishop of Moosonee, Canada, who for more than forty years led services in Cree, Inuit and other languages of his parishioners.
WSaint Innocent of Alaska, also known as Saint Innocent Metropolitan of Moscow was a Russian Orthodox missionary priest, then the first Orthodox bishop and archbishop in the Americas, and finally the Metropolitan of Moscow and all Russia. Remembered for his missionary work, scholarship, and leadership in Alaska and the Russian Far East during the 19th century, he is known for his abilities as a scholar, linguist, and administrator, as well as his great zeal for his work.
WPeter Jones was an Ojibwe Methodist minister, translator, chief and author from Burlington Heights, Upper Canada. His Ojibwa name was Kahkewāquonāby, which means "[Sacred] Waving Feathers". In Mohawk, he was called Desagondensta, meaning "he stands people on their feet". In his youth his band of Mississaugas had been on the verge of destruction. As a preacher and a chieftain, as a role model and as a liaison to governments, his leadership helped his people survive contact with Europeans.
WJoseph Onasakenrat, also known as Sosé Onasakenrat, was a Mohawk chief of Kanesatake, one of the Seven Nations of Canada in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
WEdmund James Peck, known in Inuktitut as Uqammaq, was an Anglican missionary in the Canadian North on the Quebec coast of Hudson Bay and on Baffin Island. He founded the first permanent mission on Baffin Island, Nunavut. He developed Inuktitut syllabics, derived from the Cree syllabary and the first substantial English-Inuktitut dictionary.
WKenneth Lee Pike was an American linguist and anthropologist. He was the originator of the theory of tagmemics, the coiner of the terms "emic" and "etic" and the developer of the constructed language Kalaba-X for use in teaching the theory and practice of translation.
WJames Printer, also known as Wowaus, (1640–1709) was a Native American from the Nipmuc tribe who studied and worked as a printer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was one of the most famous early Nipmuc writers. Printer was the first Native American printer's devil in America as well as one of John Eliot's most accomplished interpreters who assisted in the creation of the Eliot Indian Bible.
WStanley Francis Rother was an American Roman Catholic priest from Oklahoma who was murdered in Guatemala. Ordained as a priest for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City in 1963, he held several parish assignments there until 1968 when he was assigned as a missionary priest to Guatemala where he was murdered in 1981 in his Guatemalan mission rectory.
WRachel Saint was an evangelical Christian missionary from the United States who worked in Ecuador.
WWilliam Cameron Townsend was a influential twentieth-century American Christian missionary-linguist who founded Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics, both of which have emphasized translation of the Bible into minority languages and the development of literacy and bilingual education programs.
WSamuel Austin Worcester, was a missionary to the Cherokee, translator of the Bible, printer, and defender of the Cherokee's sovereignty. He collaborated with Elias Boudinot in the American Southeast to establish the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper. The Cherokees gave him the honorary name A-tse-nu-sti, which translates to "messenger" in English.
WAllen Wright was Principal Chief of the Choctaw Republic from late 1866 to 1870. He also became a Presbyterian minister after graduating from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He was very active in the Choctaw government, holding several elected positions, and has been credited with the name Oklahoma for the land that would become the state.