Great Lakes Algonquian syllabics
Great Lakes Algonquian syllabics (or Great Lakes Aboriginal syllabics,[1] also referred to as "Western Great Lakes Syllabary" by Campbell[2]) is a writing system for several Algonquian languages that emerged during the nineteenth century and whose existence was first noted in 1880.[3] It was originally used near the Great Lakes: Fox (also known as Meskwaki or Mesquakie), Sac (the latter also spelled Sauk), and Kickapoo (these three constituting closely related but politically distinct dialects of a single language for which there is no common term), in addition to Potawatomi. Use of the script was subsequently extended to the Siouan language Ho-Chunk (also known as Winnebago).[4] Use of the Great Lakes script has also been attributed to speakers of the Ottawa dialect of the Ojibwe language, but supporting evidence is weak.[1]
Great Lakes Algonquian syllabics
Consonant and vowel letters that comprise a syllable are grouped into units that are separated by spaces.[5] The system is of interest to students of writing systems because it is a case of an alphabetic system acquiring aspects of a syllabary.[6]
The Great Lakes script is unrelated to Cree syllabics, which was invented by James Evans to write Cree and extended to a number of other Canadian indigenous languages.[7]
History and origins[edit]
The script is based upon "a European cursive form of the Roman alphabet".[8] Vowel letters correspond with French writing conventions, suggesting a French source. The order of the consonants in tables of the Great Lakes Syllabics is evidence that the script was developed by people who knew the Canadian syllabics syllabary previously in use in Canada, suggesting an origin in Canada.[9]
The early development of the system is not known. In 1880, when first reported, use of the script was widespread among speakers of Fox and Sac.[8] Some remarks by Potawatomi speakers suggest that the first Potawatomi usage was in approximately the same period.[10]
Potawatomi does not have a consonant /h/, and instead has a glottal stop /ʔ/ in places where Fox would have /h/. In Potawatomi, the glottal stop is the only consonant not represented in the script, and similarly in Fox /h/ is the only consonant that is not represented. Because glottal stops have frequently been overlooked when transcribing Native American languages with the Latin script, whereas /h/ seldom is, this anomaly suggests that the script was originally developed for Potawatomi, and subsequently transmitted to speakers of Fox, Sac, and Kickapoo.[11]
Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) adoption[edit]
The Fox alphabet was adapted by speakers of Ho-Chunk (also known as Winnebago) subsequent to an encounter in Nebraska in 1883–1884 with Fox speakers, who told them of other Fox speakers who were using a new writing system in order to write their own language. On a subsequent visit to Fox territory in Iowa in 1884, a Winnebago speaker learned to write in the script.[25] Period reports indicate rapid adoption of the script by Winnebago speakers in Nebraska and Wisconsin. Winnebago phonology is significantly different from that of Fox-Sauk-Kickapoo and Potawatomi, with both more consonants and vowels, and the script was adapted in order to accommodate some of these differences.[26]
Anthropologist Paul Radin worked with Ho-Chunk speaker Sam Blowsnake to produce Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of an American Indian.[27] This autobiography was based upon handwritten material composed by Blowsnake in the script.[28] Use of syllabics declined over time; when Radin visited Winnebago communities in 1912, he reported that it was known only to a small number of people.[29]
Possible Ottawa use[edit]
Some comments by Ottawa speaker Andrew J. Blackbird "…in which he recalls his father Mackadepenessy 'making his own alphabet which he called 'Paw-pa-pe-po'" and teaching it to other Ottawas from the L'Arbre Croche village on the Lower Peninsula of Michigan have been interpreted as suggesting use of a syllabic writing system by Ottawas earlier in the nineteenth century, although Blackbird was not himself a user of the script. Blackbird’s Ottawa writings use a mixture of French and English-based characteristics, but not those of Great Lakes script.[30] There are no known Odawa texts written in the script.
It has been suggested that Blackbird’s father may have been referring to a separate orthography developed by French Roman Catholic missionaries and spread by missionary August Dejean, who arrived at L'Arbre Croche, Michigan in 1827, and wrote a primer and catechism in an orthography similar to that used by other French missionaries.[11]
Ojibwa use[edit]
In his 1932 "Ethnobotany of the Ojibwe Indians," Huron H. Smith records, "The Ojibwe have written their language for a longer time than any other Algonquin tribe and, while they employ a script in corresponding with absent members of the tribe, it has little value to the ethnologist...." Smith then clarifies what he means by "script" and provides a script table in the footnotes.[31]
Written materials[edit]
In the early twentieth century, Bureau of American Ethnology linguist Truman Michelson engaged several Fox speakers to write stories using the Fox script. Some of these texts are lengthy, running to several hundred printed pages each. A large collection of these unpublished texts is now archived in the Smithsonian Institution National Anthropological Archives. A photograph of Michelson and prolific Fox writer Albert Kiyana appears in Kinkade and Mattina (1996).[32] Kiyana wrote stories for Michelson between 1911 and his death in 1918. A newly edited and transcribed version of "Owl Sacred Pack," one of the culturally most significant of the stories written by Kiyana, has recently been published.[33]