The one-valley effective-mass approximation is developed for the case of uniaxial crystals with indirect bandgap and applied to the donor states in 4H-SiC. Good agreement is found between the theory and experiments providing data on the electronic states of the shallowest nitrogen donor in 4H-SiC. The ionization energy of this donor is deduced to be 61.35 ± 0.2 meV.