On Wed, 1 Nov 2000, Dennis wrote:
> Dan Moonhawk Alford wrote:
> >
> > Stolfi and Dennis,
> >
> > 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.
>
> They know the date with quite a bit of precision! Is it coincidental
> that it was just before Columbus?
Ouch. I have no good answer to that, and I've actually wondered the same.
Was it worked out in great generational precision? Is that the date when
the minor tribe joined them? Or is it "metaphorical"?
> > 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)
>
> I'll have to look at your web page later. But you're saying
that they're saying
> that Joseph Smith did actually see golden plates, which he said were
> "reformed Egyptian characters".
The word "reformed" suggests a simplification of ideographs to something
more like letters. The syllabary I'm thinking of is very much like the
Cree syllabary, which can be found in many reference books.
> Hmmm. I was tempted to say that Smith pulled off a bogus decipherment
> that makes Newbold, Brumbaugh, and Levitov look like amoebae. But in
> my opinion he just made up a story that had nothing to do with any
> gold plates.
Okay, and mine is that he actually saw some; I'll hang with my distant
relatives on this one. It being a primal history of America, he had to
include Indians as part of the lost 12 Tribes of Israel.
> Why didn't the Cherokee come forth and expose his hoax? It wouldn't
> have been a lot of trouble before the Mormon church got established.
> Did the gold sheets contain Cherokee wisdom that the Cherokee wanted
> known only to themselves? In that case they would simply have
> remained silent.
Should they have complained before or after the massacres and Trail of
Tears forced relocation? Let's remember their "enemy" status at the time,
in the way of "progress" -- and they should have revealed earlier that
they actually had writing? It was sacred knowledge even to the Cherokees.
> > 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 we've said before, syllabaries aren't practical for all languages.
> Also, Cherokee is a tone language, and the Cherokee syllabary doesn't
> denote tones. The Cherokee call this "book Cherokee".
What an excellent point, putting fuel on my fire!! If my guess and my
ancestors' teachings are right, the syllabary would have been Algonquian,
with no tones and four vowels (so the syllabic characters "twirled",
honoring the Four Directions to indicate or hint at the vowel). Cherokee,
however, coming from a different, southern origin, would prove to be a
difficult fit; over time, the characters would have been modified, new
characters added, etc., in order to better fit the Cherokee system. Too
bad they didn't twirl characters for tone! But this does better explain
the rather puzzling outcome of a syllabary when Sequoyah the Great
supposedly only saw vowel-inclusive alphabetic letters.
> > 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).
>
> Do share the evidence -- and it'd better be good! However, ~7000
> years could put us at the time of the very ancient cities found at
> Jericho and Catal Huyuk, which predate currently known recorded
> history. If you're right, we might yet find writing in them, which
> would be very interesting indeed!
I can't share the actual evidence; that's owned by Stan Knowlton, and he
hasn't even shared a hard copy with me.
What I can share (after framing this within a context where Egyptian
mummies have traces of THC, cocaine and tobacco -- only known to have been
grown in the Americas at that time -- this suggesting transoceanic
Atlantic trade routes) is my own experience. After showing me an ancient
economic transaction token found with a bunch of them in a Canadian
Rockies archaeological dig that was identical to pictures of the same
found in Mesopotamia and dated to (?!) either 6000 or 4000 BC, he showed
me a chart filled with syllabic characters. I recognized the first row of
about 8-9 symbols because of my working familiarity with the Cree
syllabary, but the label on this was "Blackfoot Syllabarium." The
characters on the next row matched the first row pretty well, sometimes
with reorientation, and same for the last two rows. The labels for these
others were: "Ancient Arabic," "Ancient Sanskrit," and "Cypriote Script"!
I've since determined that it's possible that Arabic and Sanskrit began as
simple syllabics -- maybe they stopped twirling because of 5 or more
vowels in their systems; either that or the Algonquians were more
brilliant than we had surmised, twirling hitherto static letters to at the
same time honor the Four Directions and indicate their precisely 4 vowels!
Hmmm -- I'll bet the "meanings" of the four vowels also embody
characteristics of the Directions (E = beginnings; S = heat & growth; W =
sunsets & maturing; N = cold & wisdom). People with southern origins
(esp. below the equator, I think) go counter-sunwise instead of sunwise
(i.e., "clockwise") around the circle.
> However, Jacques has had much to say about the quality of what appears
> in Scientific American, and your theory definitely needs more proof,
> which I eagerly await.
Proof I can't give; sorry -- not mine to give. But I can tell you my own
experience with the evidence.
> With tongue firmly in cheek,
> Dennis
Don't bite it! ;-)
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