Chapter XCI: Section 2: Syllabaries and Alphabets

It is worthy of observation that the Greeks used the same word, γράφειν, to mean drawing and writing, suggesting their early identity. Drawing was the beginning of writing, and writing was a conventionalized drawing. The connection of both with gesture signs has been noticed above. A gesture sign is a significant but evanescent motion, and a drawing is produced by a motion which leaves significant marks. When man became proficient in oral language, and desired to give permanence to his thoughts, he first resorted to the designs of picture-writing, already known and used, to express the sounds of his speech.

The study of different systems of writing--such as the Chinese, the Assyrian, and the Egyptian--shows that no people ever invented an arbitrary system of writing or originated a true alphabet by any fixed predetermination. All the known graphic systems originated in picture-writing. All have passed through the stage of conventionalism to that commonly called the hieroglyphic, while from the latter, directly or after an intermediate stage, sprang the syllabary which used modifications of the old ideograms and required a comparatively small number of characters. Finally, among the more civilized of ancient races the alphabet was gradually introduced as a simplification of the syllabary, and still further reduced the necessary characters.

The old ideograms were, or may be supposed to have been, intelligible to all peoples without regard to their languages. In this respect they resembled the Arabic and Roman numerals which are understood by many nations of diverse speech when written while the sound of the words figured by them is unintelligible. Their number, however, was limited only by the current ideas, which might become infinite. Also each idea was susceptible of preservation in different forms, and might readily be misinterpreted; therefore the simplicity and precision of alphabetic writing amply compensated for its exclusiveness.

The high development of pictorial writing in Mexico and Central America is well known. Some of these peoples had commenced the introduction of phonetics into their graphic system, especially in the rendering of proper names, which probably also was the first step in that direction among the Egyptians. But Prof. Cyrus Thomas (_b_) makes the following remark upon the Maya system, which is of general application:

It is certain, and even susceptible of demonstration, that a
large portion, perhaps the majority, of the characters are symbols.

The more I study these characters the stronger becomes the
conviction that they have grown out of a pictographic system similar
to that common among the Indians of North America. The first step in
advance appears to have been to indicate, by characters, the gesture
signs.

It is not possible now to discuss the many problems contained in the vast amount of literature on the subject of the Mexican and Central American writing, and it is the less necessary because much of the literature is recent and easily accessible. With regard to the Indian tribes north of Mexico, it is not claimed that more than one system of characters resembling a syllabary or alphabet was invented by any of them. The Cherokee alphabet, so called, was adopted from the Roman by Sequoya, also called George Gist, about A. D. 1820, and was ingenious and very valuable to the tribe, but being an imitation of an old invention it has no interest in relation to the present topic. The same is manifestly true regarding the Cree alphabet, which was of missionary origin. The exception claimed is that commonly, but erroneously, called the Micmac hieroglyphics. The characters do not partake of the nature of hieroglyphs, and their origin is not Micmac.

THE MICMAC “HIEROGLYPHICS.”

The Micmac was an important tribe, occupying all of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton island, Prince Edward island, the northern part of New Brunswick, and the adjacent part of the province of Quebec, and ranging over a great part of Newfoundland. According to Rev. Silas T. Rand, op. cit., Megum is the singular form of the name which the Micmacs use for themselves. Rev. Eugene Vetromile (_a_) translates “Micmacs” as “secrets practicing men,” from the Delaware and old Abnaki word _malike_, “witchcraft,” and says the name was given them on account of their numerous jugglers; but he derives Mareschite, which is an Abnaki division, from the same word and makes it identical with Micmac. The French called them Souriquois, which Vetromile translates “good canoe men.” They were also called Acadians, from their habitat in Acadie, now Nova Scotia.

The first reference in literature with regard to the spontaneous use by Indians of the characters now called the “Micmac hieroglyphs” appears in the Jesuit Relations of the year 1652, p. 28. In the general report of that year the work of Father Gabriel Druillettes, who had been a missionary to the Abnaki (including under this term the Indians of Acadia, afterwards distinguished as Micmacs), is dwelt upon in detail. His own words, in a subordinate report, appear to have been adopted in the general report of the Father Superior, and, translated, are as follows:

Some of them wrote out their lessons in their own manner. They
made use of a small piece of charcoal instead of a pen, and a
piece of bark instead of paper. Their characters were novel, and
so _particuliers_ [individual or special] that one could not know
or understand the writing of the other; that is to say, that they
made use of certain marks according to their own ideas as of a local
memory to preserve the points and the articles and the maxims which
they had remembered. They carried away this paper with them to study
their lesson in the repose of the night.

No further remark or description appears.

It is interesting to notice that the abbé J. A. Maurault, (_a_) after his citation of the above report of Father Druillettes, states in a footnote translated as follows:

We have ourselves been witnesses of a similar fact among
the Têtes-de-Boule Indians of the River St. Maurice where we
had been missionaries during three years. We often saw during
our instructions or explanations of the catechism that the
Indians traced on pieces of bark, or other objects very singular
hieroglyphs. These Indians afterward passed the larger part of
the following night in studying what they had so written, and in
teaching it to their children or their brothers. The rapidity with
which they by this manner learnt their prayers was very astonishing.

The Indians called by the Abbé Maurault the Têtes-de-Boule or Round Heads, are also known as Wood Indians, and are ascertained to have been a band of the Ojibwa, which shows a connection between the practice of the Ojibwa and that of the Micmacs, both being of the Algonquian stock, to mark on bark ideographic or other significant inscriptions which would assist them to memorize what struck them as of special interest and importance, notably religious rites. Many instances are given in the present paper, and the spontaneous employment of prayer sticks by other persons of the same stock is also illustrated in Figs. 715 and 716.

The next notice in date is by Père Chrétien Le Clercq (_a_), a member of the Recollect order of Franciscans who landed on the coast of Gaspé in 1675, learned the language of the Micmacs and worked with them continuously for several years.

It would appear that he observed and took advantage of the pictographic practice of the Indians, which may have been continued from that reported by Father Druillettes a few years earlier with reference to the same general region, or may have been a separate and independent development in the tribe with which Father Le Clercq was most closely connected.

His quaint account is translated as follows:

Our Lord inspired me with this method the second year of my
mission, when, being greatly embarrassed as to the mode in which I
should teach the Indians to pray, I noticed some children making
marks on birch bark with coal, and they pointed to them with their
fingers at every word of the prayer which they pronounced. This
made me think that by giving them some form which would aid their
memory by fixed characters, I should advance much more rapidly
than by teaching on the plan of making them repeat over and over
what I said. I was charmed to know that I was not deceived, and
that these characters which I had traced on paper produced all the
effect I desired, so that in a few days they learned all their
prayers without difficulty. I cannot describe to you the ardor with
which these poor Indians competed with each other in praiseworthy
emulation which should be the most learned and the ablest. It
costs, indeed, much time and pains to make all they require, and
especially since I enlarged them so as to include all the prayers of
the church, with the sacred mysteries of the trinity, incarnation,
baptism, penance, and the eucharist.

There is no description whatever of the characters.

The next important printed notice or appearance of the Micmac characters is in the work of Rev. Christian Kauder, a Redemptorist missionary, the title page of which is given in Fig. 1082. It was printed in Vienna in 1866 and therefore was about two centuries later than the first recorded invention of the characters. During those two centuries the French and therefore the Roman Catholic influences had been much of the time dormant in the habitat of the Micmacs (the enforced exodus of the French from Acadie being about 1755). Father Kauder was one of the most active in the renewal of the missions. He learned the Micmac language, probably gathered together such “hieroglyphs” on rolls of bark as had been preserved, added to them parts of the Greek and Roman alphabet and other designs, and arranged the whole in systematic and grammatic form. After about twenty years of work upon them he procured their printing in Vienna. A small part of the edition, which was the first printed, reached the Micmacs. The main part, shipped later, was lost at sea in the transporting vessel.

Fig. 1083 shows the version of the Lord’s Prayer, published by Dr. J. G. Shea (_a_) in his translation of Le Clercq’s First Establishment of the Faith in New France, this and the preceding figure being taken from the Bibliography of the Languages of the N. A. Indians by Mr. J. C. Pilling, of the Bureau of Ethnology.

The publication of Father Kauder was a duodecimo in three parts: Catechism, 144 pages; religious reflections, 109 pages; and hymnal, 208 pages. They are very seldom found bound together, and a perfect copy of either of the parts or volumes is rare. On a careful examination of the hieroglyphs, so called, it seems evident that on the original substratum of Micmac designs or symbols, each of which represented mnemonically a whole sentence or verse, a large number of arbitrary designs have been added to express ideas and words which were not American, and devices were incorporated with them intended to represent the peculiarities of the Micmac grammar as understood by Kauder, and it would seem of a universal grammar antedating Volapük. The explanation of these additions has never been made known. Kauder died without having left any record or explanation of the plan by which he attempted to convert the mnemonic characters invented by the Indians into what may be considered an exposition of organized words (not sounds) in grammatical form. An attempt which may be likened to this was made by Bishop Landa in his use of the Maya characters, and one still more in point was that of the priests in Peru, mentioned in connection with Figs. 1084 and 1085, infra.

The result is that in the several camps of Micmacs visited by the present writer in Cape Breton island, Prince Edward island, and Nova Scotia, fragments of the printed works are kept and used for religious worship, and also many copies on various sheets and scraps of paper have been made of similar fragments, but their use is entirely mnemonic, as was that of their ancient bark originals. Very few of the Indians who in one sense can “read” them currently in the Micmac language, have any idea of the connection between any one of the characters and the vocables of the language. When asked what a particular character meant they were unable to answer, but would begin at the commencement of the particular prayer or hymn, and when arrested at any point would then for the first time be able to give the Micmac word or words which corresponded with that character. This was not in any religious spirit, as is mentioned by Dr. Washington Matthews, in his Mountain Chant, Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, with reference to the Navajo’s repeating all, if any, of the chant, but because they only knew that way to use the script. In that use they do as is mentioned of the Ojibwa, supra. The latter often by their bark script keep the memory of archaic words, and the Micmac keep that of religious phrases not well understood. A few, and very few, of the characters, which were constantly repeated, and were specially conspicuous, were known as distinct from the other characters by one only of the Indians examined. It apparently had never occurred to any of them that these same characters, which in their special mnemonic connection represented Micmac words, could be detached from their context and by combination represent the same words in other sentences. Therefore, the expression “reading,” used in reference to the operation, is not strictly correct. In most cases the recitation of the script was in a chant, and the musical air of the Roman Catholic Church belonging to the several hymns and chants was often imitated. The object, therefore, which has been expressed in the above quoted accounts of Fathers Druillettes and Le Clercq had been accomplished regarding the then extant generation of Indians two hundred years before Father Kauder’s publication. That object was for Indians under their immediate charge to learn in the most speedy manner certain formulæ of the church, by the use of which it was supposed that they would gain salvation. The formation of an alphabet, or even a syllabary, by which the structure of the language should be considered and its vocal expression recorded, was not the object. It is possible that there was an objection to the instruction of the Indians in a modern alphabet by which they might more readily learn either French or English, and at the same time be able to read profane literature and thereby become perverted from the faith. These missionaries certainly refrained, for some reason, not only from instructing the heathen in any of the languages of civilization, but also from teaching them the use of an alphabet for their own language.

It is probable that Father Kauder had some idea of reducing the language of the Micmacs to a written form, based not upon verbal or even syllabic notation, but upon some anomalous compromise between their ideographic original or substratum and a grammatic superstructure. If so, he entirely failed. The interesting point with regard to this remarkable and unique attempt is, that there is undoubtedly a basis of Indian designs and symbols included and occluded among the differentiated devices in the three volumes mentioned, which arbitrarily express thoughts and words by a false pictographic method, instead of sentences and verses. But the change from the pictorial forms to those adopted, if not as radical as that from the Egyptian hieroglyphs to the Roman text, resembles that from the archaic to the modern Chinese. Therefore it would follow that the present form of the characters is not one which the Indians would learn more readily than an alphabet or a syllabary, and that is the ascertained fact. At Cow bay, a Micmac camp, about 12 miles from Halifax, an aged chief who in his boyhood at Cape Breton island was himself instructed by Father Kauder in these characters, explained that Kauder taught them to the boys by drawing them on a blackboard and by repetition, very much in the manner in which a schoolmaster in civilized countries teaches the alphabet to children. The actual success of the Cherokees in the free and general use of Sequoya’s Syllabary, which was not founded on pictographs, but on signs for sounds, should be noted in this connection.

Among the thousands of scratchings on the Kejemkoojik rocks, many of which were undoubtedly made by the Micmac, only two characters were found resembling any in Kauder’s volumes, and those were common symbols of the Roman Catholic Church, and might readily have been made by the Frenchmen, who also certainly left scratchings there. Altogether after careful study of the subject it is considered that the devices in Father Kauder’s work are so intrinsically changed, both in form and intent, from the genuine Micmac designs that they can not be presented as examples of Indian pictography.

Connected with this topic is the following account in the Jesuit Relations of 1646, p. 31, relative to the Montagnais and other Algonquians of the St. Lawrence river, near the Saguenay: “They confess themselves with admirable frankness; some of them carry small sticks to remind them of their sins; others write, after their manner, on small pieces of bark.” This is but the application of the ideographic writing on birch bark by the converts to the ceremonies and stories of the Christian religion, as the same art had been long used for their aboriginal traditions.

Examples of pictographic work, done in a spirit similar to that above mentioned, are given by Wiener (_g_), describing the illustrations of which Figs. 1084 and 1085 are copies, one-fifth real size.

In the most distant part of Peru, in the valley of Paucartambo, at Sicasica, the history of the passion of Christ was found written in the same ideographic system that the Indians of Ancon and the north of the coast were acquainted with before the conquest. (Fig. 1084.) The drawings were made with a pencil, probably first dipped in a mixture of gum and mandioc flour. This tissue is of a dark brown and the designs are of a very bright red.

The second series, Fig. 1085, which was found at Paucartambo, was written in an analogous system on old Dutch paper. The designs are red and blue.

In an article by Terrien de Lacouperie (_f_) is the following condensed account, part of which relates to Fig. 1086, and may be compared with the priestly inventions above mentioned:

Père Desgodins was able, in 1867, to make a copy of eleven
pages from a manuscript written in hieroglyphics, and belonging
to a tom-ba or tong-ba, a medicine man among the Mo-sos. These
hieroglyphics are not, properly speaking, a writing, still less the
current writing of the tribe. The sorcerers or tong-bas alone use
it when invited by the people to recite these so-called prayers,
accompanied with ceremonies and sacrifices, and also to put some
spells on somebody, a specialty of their own. They alone know how to
read them and understand their meaning; they alone are acquainted
with the value of these signs, combined with the numbers of the
dice and other implements of divination which they use in their
witchcraft. Therefore, these hieroglyphics are nothing else than
signs more or less symbolical and arbitrary, known to a small number
of initiated who transmit their knowledge to their eldest son and
successor in their profession of sorcerers. Such is the exact value
of the Mo-so manuscripts; they are not a current and common writing;
they are hardly a sacred writing in the limits indicated above.

However, they are extremely important for the general theory of
writing, inasmuch as they do not pretend to show in that peculiar
hieroglyphical writing any survival of former times. According
to these views, it was apparently made up for the purpose by the
tom-bas or medicine men. This would explain, perhaps, the anomalous
mixture of imperfect and bad imitations of ancient seal characters
of China, pictorial figures of animals and men, bodies and their
parts, with several Tibetan and Indian characters and Buddhist
emblems.

It is not uninteresting to remark here that a kind of meetway or
toomsah, i. e., priest, has been pointed out among the Kakhyens of
Upper Burma. The description is thus quoted:

“A formal avenue always exists as the entrance to a Kakhyen
village. * * * On each side of the broad grassy pathway are a
number of bamboo posts, 4 feet high or thereabouts, and every 10
paces or so, taller ones, with strings stretching across the path,
supporting small stars of split rattan and other emblems. There are
also certain hieroglyphics which may constitute a kind of embryo
picture-writing but are understood by none but the meetway or
priest.”

PICTOGRAPHS IN ALPHABETS.

Mr. W. W. Rockhill, in Am. Anthrop., IV, No. 1, p. 91, notices the work of M. Paul Vial, missionary, etc., De la langue et de l’écriture indigènes au Yûnân, with the following remarks:

Père Vial has published a study upon the undeciphered script
of the Lolos of Western China, of which the first specimen was
secured some twelve years ago by E. Colborne Baber. Prof. Terrien
de Lacouperie endeavored to establish a connection between these
curious characters and the old Indian script known as the southern
Ashoka alphabet. The present, Père Vial’s, work gives them a much
less glorious origin. He says of them: “The native characters were
formed without key, without method. It is impossible to decompose
them. They are written not with the strokes of a brush, but with
straight, curved, round, or angular lines, as the shape chosen for
them requires. As the representation could not be perfect, they have
stopped at something which can strike the eye or mind--form, motion,
passion, a head, a bird’s beak, a mouth, right or left, lightness or
heaviness; in short, at that portion of the object delineated which
is peculiarly characteristic of it. But all characters are not of
this expressive kind; some even have no connection with the idea
they express. This anomaly has its reason. The native characters
are much less numerous than the words of the language, only about
thirty per cent. Instead of increasing the number of ideograms, the
Lolos have used one for several words. As a result of this practice
the natives have forgotten the original meaning of many of their
characters.”

A summary of the original cuneiform characters, numbering one hundred and seventy, gives many of them as recognizable sketches of objects. The foot stands for “go,” the hand for “take,” the legs for “run,” much as in the Egyptian and in the Maya and other American systems. The bow, the arrow, and the sword represent war; the vase, the copper tablet, and the brick represent manufacture; boats, sails, huts, pyramids, and many other objects are used as devices.

W. St. Chad Boscawen (_a_) says:

Man’s earliest ventures in the art of writing were, as we are
well aware, of a purely pictorial nature, and even to this day such
a mode of ideography can be seen among some of the Indian tribes. *
* * There is no reasonable doubt but that all the principal systems
of paleography now in vogue had their origin at some remote period
in this pictorial writing. In so primitive a center as Babylonia we
should naturally expect to find such a system had been in vogue, and
in this we are not disappointed.

Fig. 1087 is presented as a brief exhibit of the pictographs in some inchoate alphabets.