Canadian syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of writing systems used with a number of indigenous Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Eskaleut, and (formerly) Athabaskan language families. These languages had no formal writing system previously. They are valued for their distinctiveness from the Latin script and for the ease with which literacy can be achieved. For instance, by the late 19th century the Cree had achieved what may have been one of the highest rates of literacy in the world. Despite the name, the script is an abugida, where glyphs represent consonant–vowel pairs, determined by the rotation of the glyphs. They were created by linguist and missionary James Evans working with the Cree and Ojibwe.
Canadian syllabics are currently used to write all of the Cree languages, including Eastern Cree, Plains Cree, Swampy Cree, Woods Cree, and Naskapi. They are used regionally for the other large Canadian Algonquian language, Ojibwe, as well as for Blackfoot. Among the Athabaskan languages further to the west, syllabics have been used at one point or another to write Dakelh (Carrier), Chipewyan, Slavey, Tłı̨chǫ (Dogrib), and Dane-zaa (Beaver). Syllabics have occasionally been used in the United States by communities that straddle the border. Among Inuit languages and dialects of the Canadian Arctic, they are used to write Inuktitut and are co-official with the Latin script in the territory of Nunavut.
History
Cree syllabics were created in a process that culminated in 1840 by James Evans, a missionary, probably in collaboration with Indigenous language experts. Evans formalized them for Swampy Cree and Ojibwe. Evans had been inspired by the success of Sequoyah's Cherokee syllabary after encountering problems with Latin-based alphabets, and drew on his knowledge of Devanagari and Pitman shorthand.George Campbell & Gareth King (2018:462) The Routledge Concise Compendium of the World's Languages Canadian syllabics in turn influenced the Pollard script, which is used to write various Hmong–Mien and Lolo-Burmese languages.The international impact of Sequoyah's Cherokee Syllabary. Written Language and Literacy 19.1: 75–93. Other missionaries were reluctant to use it, but it was rapidly indigenized and spread to new communities before missionaries arrived.
A conflicting account is recorded in Cree oral traditions, asserting that the script originated from Cree culture before 1840. Per these traditions, syllabics were the invention of Calling Badger (, ), a Cree man. Legend states that Badger had died and returned from the spirit world to share the knowledge of writing with his people.McAdam, Sylvia. Nationhood interrupted: revitalizing Nêhiyaw legal systems p. 62 https://books-scholarsportal-info.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/en/read?id=/ebooks/ebooks4/upress4/2019-02-21/1/9780774880312#page=63 Some scholars write that these legends were created after 1840.Verne Dusenberry, 1962. The Montana Cree: A Study in Religious Persistence (Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis 3). p 267–269 Cree scholar Winona Stevenson explores the possibility that the inspiration for Cree syllabics may have originated from a near-death experience of Calling Badger. Stevenson references Fine Day, cited in David G. Mandelbaum's The Plains Cree, who states that he learned the syllabary from Strikes-him-on-the-back, who learned it directly from Calling Badger.
James Evans
In 1828, Evans, a missionary from Kingston upon Hull, England, was placed in charge of the Wesleyan mission at Rice Lake, Ontario. Here, he learned the eastern Ojibwe language spoken in the area. By 1833, he had gained further linguistic experience by teaching in various mission schools around the area, and was invited to join a church committee seeking to develop a writing system for Ojibwe, based on the Latin alphabet. By 1837, he had prepared the Speller and Interpreter in English and Indian, but was unable to get its printing sanctioned by the British and Foreign Bible Society. At the time, many missionary societies were opposed to the development of native literacy in their own languages, believing that their situation would be bettered by linguistic assimilation into colonial society.
Evans continued to use his alphabetic Ojibwe orthography despite the rejection, and even travelled to New York City to publish Ojibwe hymnals. As was common at the time, the orthography called for hyphens between the syllables of words, giving written Ojibwe a partially syllabic structure. However, his students appear to have had conceptual difficulties using the same alphabet for two different languages with very different sounds, and Evans himself found this approach awkward. Furthermore, the Ojibwe language was polysynthetic but had few distinct syllables, meaning that most words had a large number of syllables; this made them quite long when written with the Latin script. He began to experiment with creating a more syllabic script that he thought might be less awkward for his students to use.
In 1840, Evans was relocated to Norway House in northern Manitoba. Here he began learning the local Swampy Cree dialect. Like the closely related Ojibwe, it was full of long polysyllabic words.
As an amateur linguist, Evans was acquainted with the Devanagari script used in British India; in Devanagari, each letter stands for a syllable, and is modified to represent the vowel of that syllable. Such a system, now called an abugida, would have readily lent itself to writing a language such as Swampy Cree, which had a simple syllable structure of only eight consonants and four long or short vowels. Evans was also familiar with British shorthand, presumably Samuel Taylor's Universal Stenography, from his days as a merchant in England; and now he acquired familiarity with the newly published Pitman shorthand of 1837.
Adoption and use
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 Indigenous 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, David Anderson, 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),Suzanne McCarthy, "The Cree Syllabary and the Writing System Riddle", in Taylor and Olson, eds, Scripts and Literacy, p. 59 and in 1861, fifteen years after Evans had died, the British and Foreign Bible Society published a Bible in Cree syllabics.Methodist 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.Joakim Enwall (1994) A Myth Become Reality: History and Development of the Miao Written Language.
Cree oral traditions Cree oral traditions state that the script was gifted to the Cree through the spirit world, rather than being invented by a missionary.
In the 1930s, Chief Fine Day of the Sweetgrass First Nation told Mandelbaum the following account: A Wood Cree named Badger-call died and then became alive again. While he was dead he was given the characters of the syllabary and told that with them he could write Cree. Strike-him-on-the-back learned this writing from Badger-call. He made a feast and announced that he would teach it to anyone who wanted to learn. That is how I learned it. Badger-call also taught the writing to the missionaries. When the writing was given to Badger-call he was told 'They [the missionaries] will change the script and will say that the writing belongs to them. But only those who know Cree will be able to read it.' That is how we know that the writing does not belong to the whites, for it can be read only by those who know the Cree language.
Fine Day's grandson Wes Fineday gave the following account on CBC radio Morningside in two interviews in 1994 and 1998: