Sequoyah the Great? -- was Re: Antoine Casanova's research

[Dan Moonhawk Alford <dalford@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 20 Oct 2000, stolfi said:

Consider for instance the Sequoyah script: the symbol shapes and
writing direction are inspired on European letters, yet it is a
syllabary and not an alphabet, and the sounds and language could
hardly be more non-European.

And Dennis wrote:

To me, this sounds like the essential insight of
Sequoyah: the simple fact that language can be
written.  Once someone in an illiterate culture has
this insight, that person can devise a writing system
out of whatever is available.
________________________________________________

Stolfi and Dennis,

My research (and Native loyalties?) have led me to conclude that, while
your logic is flawless, it rests on a (little-known that it's contested)
*assumption* which Natives believe originated in missionary propaganda:
that Cherokee writing began with Sequoyah.

In *Tell Them That They Lie*, Sequoyah's descendants paint their side of
the picture, which includes ancient legends of how, long ago, a smaller
tribe came from the north with a writing system and joined the Cherokees,
and before Sequoyah you couldn't learn the writing unless you were of the
minor tribe. He was and a member of the Scribe Clan, and when he found
that everyone else who knew the writing except him had been massacred,
that he was the last one living who could write it, he relaxed the
hereditary requirement and everyone learned it in 3 yrs. They date it to
at least 5 (or 7?) years before Columbus. And they say the writing system
was inscribed on sheets of gold which were later stolen by a preacher
whose insights from "the angel Moroni" founded a church in Utah; the
tablets disappeared but are said to have been written "in a primitive
script" and about "an ancient history of North America." See my webpage
for more. (Sequoyah)

It's a syllabary because that's what Pre-Columbian North American writing
systems were -- syllabaries! The Algonquian people north of them had one
or more. See my webpage for more. (Blackfoot syllabary). As to looking
inspired by European alphabetic letters, allow yourself to consider the
heretical idea that our alphabetic letters were derived from original
syllabaries [uncontestable so far!] which originated in North America and
spread to the rest of the world 7000 years ago or so (strong case), or at
least were shared with North America around that time (I've seen the
evidence).

If what Sequoyah's decendants write is generationally accurate -- and
Indians I know find ancient teachings too sacred to mess with -- then the
self-serving missionary propaganda scenario becomes plausible: and away
goes the [only!] Native American Linguist icon, one that I once so admired
for his ability to quantum leap from sounds for the ears to "written
sounds" for the eyes! :-( However, the fact that he saved his language
from near-certain extinction puts him right back up there as an icon with
Alfred the Great, who similarly saved English from near-certain
extinction.

Since Alfred was given a title given to no other English monarch ("the
Great:) for saving the language, it follows that maybe we should be
talking of "Sequoyah the Great"! ;-)

warm regards, moonhawk

dalford@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<http://www.sunflower.com/~dewatson/alford.htm>

"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines!" 
                                                   -- Roy, Mystery Men