page_title: Canadian Aboriginal syllabics
section_title: Adoption and use
hierarchical_section_title: Canadian Aboriginal syllabics / History / Adoption and use
caption_attribution_description: English: A close up of a proof from a freshly made Cree-language typeface.
context_page_description: Canadian syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of abugidas created by James Evans to write a number of indigenous Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and Athabaskan language families, which had no formal writing system previously. They are valued for their distinctiveness from the Latin script of the dominant languages and for the ease with which literacy can be achieved; indeed, by the late 19th century the Cree had achieved what may have been one of the highest rates of literacy in the world.
  Canadian syllabics are currently used to write all of the Cree languages from Naskapi to the Rocky Mountains, including Eastern Cree, Woods Cree, Swampy Cree and Plains Cree. They are also used to write Inuktitut in the eastern Canadian Arctic; there they are co-official with the Latin script in the territory of Nunavut. They are used regionally for the other large Canadian Algonquian language, Ojibwe, as well as for Blackfoot, where they are obsolete. Among the Athabaskan languages further to the west, syllabics have been used at one point or another to write Dakelh, Chipewyan, Slavey, Tłı̨chǫ and Dane-zaa.
context_section_description: The local Cree community quickly took to this new writing system. Cree people began to use it to write messages on tree bark using burnt sticks, leaving messages out on hunting trails far from the mission. Evans believed that it was well adapted to Native Canadian languages, particularly the Algonquian languages with which he was familiar. He claimed that "with some slight alterations" it could be used to write "every language from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains."
  Evans attempted to secure a printing press and new type to publish materials in this writing system.  Here, he began to face resistance from colonial and European authorities.  The Hudson's Bay Company, which had a monopoly on foreign commerce in western Canada, refused to import a press for him, believing that native literacy was something to be discouraged. Evans, with immense difficulty, constructed his own press and type and began publishing in syllabics.
  Evans left Canada in 1846 and died shortly thereafter. However, the ease and utility of syllabic writing ensured its continued survival, despite European resistance to supporting it. In 1849, the Anglican bishop of Rupert's Land reported that "a few of the Indians can read by means of these syllabic characters; but if they had only been taught to read their own language in our letters, it would have been one step towards the acquisition of the English tongue."  But syllabics had taken root among the Cree (indeed, their rate of literacy was greater than that of English and French Canadians), and in 1861, fifteen years after Evans had died, the British and Foreign Bible Society published a Bible in Cree syllabics.  By then, both Protestant and Catholic missionaries were using and actively propagating syllabic writing.
  Missionary work in the 1850s and 1860s spread syllabics to western Canadian Ojibwe dialects (Plains Ojibwe and Saulteaux), but it was not often used over the border by Ojibwe in the United States.  Missionaries who had learned Evans' system spread it east across Ontario and into Quebec, reaching all Cree language areas as far east as the Naskapi.  Attikamekw, Montagnais and Innu people in eastern Quebec and Labrador use Latin alphabets.
  In 1856, John Horden, an Anglican missionary at Moose Factory, Ontario, who adapted syllabics to the local James Bay Cree dialect, met a group of Inuit from the region of Grande Rivière de la Baleine in northern Quebec.  They were very interested in adapting Cree syllabics to their language.  He prepared a few based on their pronunciation of Inuktitut, but it quickly became obvious that the number of basic sounds and the simple model of the syllable in the Evans system was inadequate to the language.  With the assistance of Edwin Arthur Watkins, he dramatically modified syllabics to reflect these needs.
  In 1876, the Anglican church hired Edmund Peck to work full-time in their mission at Great Whale River, teaching syllabics to the Inuit and translating materials into syllabics.  His work across the Arctic is usually credited with the establishment of syllabics among the Inuit.  With the support of both Anglican and Catholic missionary societies, by the beginning of the 20th century the Inuit were propagating syllabics themselves.
  In the 1880s, John William Tims, an Anglican missionary from Great Britain, invented a number of new forms to write the Blackfoot language.
  French Roman Catholic missionaries were the primary force for expanding syllabics to Athabaskan languages in the late 19th century.  The Oblate missionary order was particularly active in using syllabics in missionary work.  Oblate father Adrien-Gabriel Morice adapted syllabics to Dakelh, inventing a large number of new basic characters to support the radically more complicated phonetics of Athabaskan languages.  Father Émile Petitot developed syllabic scripts for many of the Athabaskan languages of the Northwest Territories, including Slavey and Chipewyan.
  Cree influenced the design of the Pollard script in China.
caption: A modern typeface, 2005
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