The Hancock Jeffersonian. [volume] (Findlay, Ohio) 1857-1870, 1869-03-05
A Modern Alphabet Inventor.

IN the New L Ork tribune stated tla
= a literary relic had been sold in tha
city for the sum of 81, ,l30-the high
est price any book has fetched il
this country. 1t was a copy o
''Eliot's Indian Bible" a book tina
no man living can read. Eliot was
Puritan Englishman, who emigrateC
to New England On account of hi
religious opinions, and died at RoX
bury, where a handsome memoria
was erected TO his memory by In!
admirers.
: This brought to my recollection
the labors of another ingenious
mind, known by the name of GeOrg'
Guess among the people of the Unitet
, States. He was an Indian, and hi
name See-quo-lah. Ii ever a recorC
of patient industry, untiring perse
verance, and natural ingenuity de
serves record, it is this. Eliot's Bi
BILE was in MOhegan, with the usua
Roman letters, with different signs
to denote the different infections o
sounds. But See-quo-lah invented
an alphabet for the use OF his tribe
His idea originated in the early
French and Indian wars. The Cher
okees had white prisoner, on whose
person they found letter; TO satisf,
his capturers, the prisoner had t.
read it for their edilication But o.
course the tenor OF his reading diff.
fered greatly from what he pretended
10 read from.
The "Lalking Leaf had ever been
4 mystery to these untutored minds
of the prairie They had long con
sidered it a gift Of the Great Spirit
and held it in great veneration. But
See-quo-lah, then youth, knew bet
ter; he maintained that it was purely
mans invention, and the desire to
have written alphabet for his tribe
possessed him. For long time the
idea lay dormant; the migrations oi
the tribe or their predatory excur'
sions left him no leisure. But lam
ed, and as 1t proved, for life, the
long hours of his forced imprisou-
ment brought forth the old idea
His first attempt was TO gather all
the sounds of the Cherokee tongue ;
but the result was far from encour-
aging. He collected above two han
dred. His next difficulty was to
place sign as equivalent to sound
Like the old Egyptians, and probably
like the first alphabet inventors,
whoever they may be, he made use
of hieroglyphics. He embodied pic
lures of birds, beasts, &c, which
approximated with the sounds, and
served best rs a representation. But
the mind, before it coald realize such
u category, would require an i'm
mense amount of training. He look
ed over the extensive list with some
dismay, and endeayored to modify
il. He was successful enough 10
abbreviate it to eighty-six. He was
able to accomplish this, because in
Cherokee all syllables have q vowel
ending. An enumeration and clas-
siiication of these sYllabies made, and
a sign for each, would complete it.
Thus there needed no distinction be
tween vOwels and consonanss A
rather unwieldy affair, no doubt; but
when the system was learned, easier
TO spell by than by using Eliot's
method The longest word of this
system contains but fourteen signs
or syllables, while the longest words
of Eliot's have often over thirty.
1t took the ancient world ages be-
fore it could entirely discard the
picture signs for letters. The 10 ca
of simple letters stole on impercepti-
bly,, and is enveloped in inexplicable
mystery. But this poor Indian at
one stroke discarded his pictures
signs, and invented an alphabet al
most as commodious as those Of
European nations His next diff
Guilty was to make so many signs
dissimilar to each other. Perhaps
he might have seen some English
printed matter, for some of his signs
greatly resemble our letters. The
figure 4 is prominently used. Some
signs are like Greek or Asistic let
ters, others like Slavonian. But they |
have far different sound from their
prototypes, if such they were The
sign 5 sounds like thu, NJ like h,
aud the rest are equally different. II
But most of them are pure inven-i
tions. All are used over aga;a~In
different postures, so to speak-dis-
torted, inverted or abbreviated.
His pen was nail; he wrote on |
bark. Eventually (about 1929 he
obtained pen and some paper from
one of those frontier traders, but the
pen was carefully preserved as a
guide to manufacture others by. His
ink he made himself from barks.-l
HIS first pupil was his daughter
But, like Roger Bacon, Gutenberg,
Calico, and others, his neighhors
him of practising the black
art. Doubtless he seldom left his
hut; his mind being in his work, his
tilue would be taken up with it. His
tribe stunned him; hut his inoffen-
sive, as well as his pltiable condition,
him from any dire conse
quences.
He was told that they would see
the fruits of his labors before they /
Judged too harshly. The following
year he brought his invention before
the sachems OF his tribe, causing his
daughter to write from his dictation
In an adjoining apartment, and vice
versa. The tribe were astonished 1
and after little wavering, and his
assurance of using no supernatural
power, they allowed him to instruct
some of the youths OF the tribe. AZ
ter several months interval, the
youths were brought forward, and
amid great popular excitement, were
tested and examined in as MANY in
genious ways as the cunning Indians
could suggest; but the youths proved
masters of the new art.
His discovery led to the printing
Of the New Testament in the Chero-
kee language in 1925, the United
States cast fount of type from his
and even printed q news
paper from it Tie Phosnir. The
capitals differ from the small letters
only in being little larger. The
missionaries. brought in use the
Arabic numerals, although See-Guo-
lah had invented numerals to coz
respond. '---l-l -l1'o- /
He afterwards expressed his re
gret that his invention should have
been promoted to undermine The