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Sammi Brie (talk | contribs) Adding local short description: "Anglican missionary, linguist, and naturalist", overriding Wikidata description "Anglican missionary linguist and naturalist" (Shortdesc helper) |
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From 1882 to 1889, he was in London, where he was first a curate at [[Spitalfields]] and later in [[Islington]]. In 1890, he left again for Canada where he was based at the northern end of [[Graham Island]] in British Columbia. He lived at a village called [[Masset, British Columbia|Massett]] where several families would share a [[longhouse]] which typically had totem poles outside.
[[File:British Museum Totem Pole 1.jpg|thumb|upright|A totem pole, sold to the British Museum by [[Charles F. Newcombe]], which Keen helped to interpret.]]
Whilst in Canada Keen translated the ''[[Book of Common Prayer]]'' into [[Haida people|Haida]]; he later translated the gospels of [[Gospel of Luke|Luke]] and [[Gospel of John|John]] and the [[Acts of the Apostles]].<ref name="keenbio"/>
In Masset, Keen took an interest in [[natural history]]. In 1891, he published his first paper on local beetles (''Some British Columbian Coleoptera'') and sent off 46 samples for identification to the [[British Museum]].<ref name="keenbio"/> In 1894 he first described the [[Northwestern deer mouse]], which was named Keen's mouse, or ''Peromyscus keeni'', in his honour.<ref name="bo">{{cite book|last=Beolens|first=Bo|title=The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals |year=2009 |publisher=JHU Press|page=220|isbn=9780801895333|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I-kSmWLc6vYC&q=rev+john+henry+keen&pg=PA220|display-authors=etal}}</ref> He was also the first to scientifically
Keen returned on leave in 1898 and his translated prayer book was published in 1899 in London by the [[Missionary Society]].<ref name="bo"/> The book went out of print as a result of its intended audience dying out. It is estimated that before the Europeans arrived, there were 10,000 people who spoke Haida. By 1900, there were about 700.<ref>[http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/Haida/index.html The Book of Common Prayer in Haida], Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, 1899, accessed 16 November 2010,</ref> There were thought to be only about 30 people in 1999 who spoke the Haida language,<ref name="ANL">{{cite web | title=Alaska Native Language Population and Speaker Statistics | date=1 January 1999 | url =http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/stats.html | accessdate=7 November 2010}}</ref>
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