The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1870-09-10
Se.quO.yah, the Inventor of the Cherokee
Alphabet.

HdiuS Vi I'LL thinking men.
Se-quO.yah, the Inventor of the Cherokee
Alphabet.
Se-quo-yah first exercised his genius in
making an improved kind of wooden milk
pans and swimmers for his mother. Then
he built her milk house, with all suitable
conveniences, on one of those grand sprinsg
that gurgle from the mountains of the old
Cherokee Nation. AS climax, he even
helped her to milk her cows; and he clear
ed additions to her fields, and worked on
them with her. She contrived to get a
petty stock of goods, and traded with her
countrymen. She taught Se-quo-yah to be
a good judge of furs. He would 60 on
expeditions with the hunters, and would
select such skins as he wanted for his
mother before they returned.* 1t is not
wonderful that Se-quo-yah's mechanical
genius led him into the highest branch of
art known to his people, and that he became
their greatest silversmith. His articles of
silverware excelled all similar manufactures
among his countrymen.
He next conceived the idea of becoming
blacksmith. He visited the shops of
white men from time to time. He never
asked to be taught the trade. He had eyes
in his head, and hands; and when he
bought the necessary material and went
to work, it is characteristic that his first
performance was to make his bellows and
his tools; and those who afterward saw
them told me they were very we'll made.
After he had grown to mans estate he
learned to draw. His sketches, at first
rude, at last acquired considerable merit.
He had been taught no rules of per-
spective but while his perspective diff
fered from that of European, he did
not ignore it, like, the Chinese. He had
now a very comfortable hewedlog residence
well furnished with such articles as were
common with the better class of white set
tiers at that time, many of them, however,
made by himself.
= Il
Between 1909 and 1921, which latter was
his fifty-second year, the great work of his
life was accomplished. n The general
theory with many Indians was, that the
written speech of the white man was one
of the mysterious gifts of the Great Spirit.
Se-quo-yah boldly avowed it to be mere
ingenious continuance, that the red man
could master if he would try.
Repeated discussion on this point at
length fully turned his thoughts in this
new channel. He seems to have disdained
the requirement of the English language.
Perhaps he suspected first what he was
bound to know before he completed his
task, that the Cherokee language has GER
tain necessities and peculiarities of its own.
1t is almost impossible to write Indian words
and names correctly in English. The Eng
lish alphabet has not capacity for its ex-
preston. If ten white men sat down to
write the words an Indian uttered, the
probabilities are that one half Of them
would write them differently from the
other half. 1t is this which has led to such
For instance, we write the word for the
tribe Cherokee, and the letter r, or its
sound, is scarcely used in their language.
To-day Cherokee always pronounces it
Chalaque, the pronunciation being between
that and Shalakke. On these peculiarities
it is not the purpose of this article to enter,
but hasten to George Gist, breeding over a
written language for his people.
His first essay was natural enough. He
tried to invent symbols to represent words.
These he sometimes cut out of bark
with his knife, but generally wrote, or
rather drew. With these symbols he would
carry on conversation with person in
another apartment. AS may be supposed,
his symbols multiplied fearfully and won
derfully. The Indian languages are rich
in their creative power. By using pieces
of we'll known words that contain the prom
inent idea, double or compound words are
freely made This has been called by
writer's treating this subject, the polysyn-
thetic. 1t is, in fact, a jumbling of sem
fences into words, by abbreviation, the
omitted parts of words being implied or
understood. There is one important fact
which will merely note here that is gen.
orally overlooked. These compounded
words, to large extent, represent the
intrusive or European idea. The names
the Indians gave many of the European
things were mere definitions Such as 'Big
Knives" etc. Occasionally they made a
dash at he French or English sounds, as
in the word 8. Yengees - for English, which
has finally been corrupted in our language
to Yankees.
OF course an attempt at fixed symbols
for words was an unhappy experiment in a
language one prominent element of which
is, the faculty of making words out of
pieces of words, or compounded Words
Besides this difficulty, no language can be
taught successfully by means of dictiona-
~, until the human memory acquires more
power. Three years of hopeless struggle
with the mighty debris Of his symbols left
him, although in the main reticent, a
were not lost. Through that heroic, un-
aided struggle he gained the first true
glimpses into the elements of language
1t is startling fact, that an uneducated
man, Of a race we are pleased to call barba-
rians, attained in few years, without
books OF tutors, what was developed through
several ages of Ph9nician, Egyptian, and
Greek wisdom.
Se-quo-yah discovered that the language
possessed certain musical sounds, such as
we call vowels, and dividing sounds, styled
by us consonants. In determining his
vowels he varied during the progress of his
discoveries, but finally settled ON the six
a, e, i, 0, Il, and cultural vowel sounding
like II in ung.
These had long and short sounds, with
the exception Of the cultural. He next
considered his consonant, or dividing sounds,
and estimated the number Of combinations
of these that would give all the sounds
required to mako words in their language.