Great Lakes Aboriginal Syllabics
Encyclopedia
Great Lakes Algonquian syllabary (also called the Great Lakes Aboriginal syllabics) is the name given to a writing system that emerged during the nineteenth century and whose existence was first noted in 1880. The syllabary was originally used by speakers of several Algonquian languages
south of 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 dialect
s of a single language for which there is no common term; in addition to Potawatomi
. Use of the syllabary was subsequently extended to the Siouan
language Ho-Chunk
(also known as Winnebago). Use of the Great Lakes syllabary has also been attributed to speakers of the Ottawa
dialect (also spelled Odawa) of the Ojibwe
language, but supporting evidence is weak.
The Great Lakes syllabary is most accurately described as a syllabary
that is based upon the characters of an alphabet
. Consonant and vowel letters that comprise a syllable
are grouped into units that are separated by spacing from adjacent units. The system is of interest to students of writing systems because it represents a case of an alphabetic system evolving into a syllabary.
The syllabary is unrelated to the Cree syllabary
that was invented by James Evans to write Cree
and extended to a number of other Canadian indigenous languages.
Since it resembles cursive Roman script, it has not been included in Unicode
.
Potawatomi does not have the phoneme
/h/, and instead has a glottal stop
/ʔ/ in places where Fox would have /h/. In Potawatomi the glottal stop is not represented in the syllabary, and in Fox /h/ is the only consonantal sound that is not represented. This anomaly in the inventory of consonant sounds has led to the suggestion that the syllabary was first used by speakers of Potawatomi, and subsequently transmitted to speakers of Fox, Sac, and Kickapoo. It would be otherwise difficult to explain why the /h/ sound is not included in the Fox versions of the syllabary even though the sound is not difficult to perceive, whereas the glottal stop, as in Potawatomi, often is.
Samples of the Fox version of the syllabary are in Jones (1906), and Walker (1981, 1996); the latter includes handwriting samples for each character or compound character from four different early twentieth-century Fox writers. Samples of the Potawatomi syllabary characters are in Walker (1981, 1986). Goddard (1996) includes a postcard written in the Fox syllabary, and Kinkade and Mattina (1996) includes a page of text in the Fox syllabary. Samples of the characters used in the Ho-Chunk syllabary are available at Ho-Chunk Syllabary.
Fox speakers refer to the syllabary in both Fox and English as the pa·pe·pi·po·, referring to the first row of consonant plus vowel syllables in traditional presentations of the syllabary.
The core component of the Fox syllabary represents 48 syllables, 4 of which are vowels by themselves, in addition to compound characters that consist of 11 consonant symbols combined with one of the four vowel characters. The syllabary writes all the consonant and vowels sounds of Fox with the exception of /h/. As well, no distinction is made between long and short vowels. A sequence of two vowels in the syllabary typically indicates the presence of /h/ between the two vowels.
Syllables are separated by spaces. Punctuation consists of a word divider used to mark the end of a word and the beginning of the next word, “…which variously appears as a dot, a small line, or an or <+> … Many writers do not use the word divider, being particularly apt to omit it at line ends, and some never use it.” Jones (1906) indicated that the dot or small line were used as word dividers and the cross as a sentence divider, but subsequent study of Fox text manuscripts does not support this claim.
Several variants of the basic syllabary existed among Fox speakers, in which various symbols were substituted for combinations of consonant and vowel letters. These variants were apparently originally used as secret codes and were not widely utilized. Samples of the variant forms are in Walker (1981), from Jones (1906).
There are also minor variations in the form of the syllabary used by Kickapoo speakers, and Kickapoo speakers living in Mexico have added some orthographic modifications based on Spanish.
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 syllabary. Period reports indicate rapid adoption of the syllabary 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 syllabary was adapted in order to accommodate some of these differences.
Anthropologist Paul Radin
worked with Ho-Chunk speaker Sam Blowsnake to produce Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of an American Indian. This autobiography was based upon handwritten material composed by Blowsnake in the syllabary. Use of the syllabary declined over time; when Radin visited Winnebago communities in 1912 he reported that it was known only to a small number of people.
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 syllabary. Blackbird’s Ottawa writings use a mixture of French and English-based characteristics, but not those of Great Lakes syllabary. There are no known Odawa texts written in the syllabary.
It has been suggested that Blackbird’s father may 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.
linguist Truman Michelson
engaged several Fox speakers to write stories using the Fox syllabary. 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). 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.
standards, glyphs for this table have been substituted with alphabetic type-set letters approximating their handwritten forms.
Algonquian languages
The Algonquian languages also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Native American languages which includes most of the languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Ojibwe language, which is a...
south of the Great Lakes
Great Lakes
The Great Lakes are a collection of freshwater lakes located in northeastern North America, on the Canada – United States border. Consisting of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, they form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total surface, coming in second by volume...
: Fox
Fox language
Fox is an Algonquian language, spoken by around 1000 Fox, Sauk, and Kickapoo in various locations in the Midwestern United States and in northern Mexico...
(also known as Meskwaki or Mesquakie), Sac (the latter also spelled Sauk), and Kickapoo, these three constituting closely related but politically distinct dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s of a single language for which there is no common term; in addition to Potawatomi
Potawatomi language
Potawatomi is a Central Algonquian language and is spoken around the Great Lakes in Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as in Kansas in the United States, and in southern Ontario in Canada, 1300 Potawatomi people, all elderly...
. Use of the syllabary was subsequently extended to the Siouan
Siouan languages
The Western Siouan languages, also called Siouan proper or simply Siouan, are a Native American language family of North America, and the second largest indigenous language family in North America, after Algonquian...
language Ho-Chunk
Winnebago language
The Winnebago language is the language of the Ho-Chunk tribe of Native Americans in the United States. The language is part of the Siouan language family, and is closely related to the languages of the Iowa, Missouri, and Oto...
(also known as Winnebago). Use of the Great Lakes syllabary has also been attributed to speakers of the Ottawa
Ottawa language
Ottawa is a dialect of the Ojibwe language, spoken by the Ottawa people in southern Ontario in Canada, and northern Michigan in the United States. Descendants of migrant Ottawa speakers live in Kansas and Oklahoma...
dialect (also spelled Odawa) of the Ojibwe
Ojibwe language
Ojibwe , also called Anishinaabemowin, is an indigenous language of the Algonquian language family. Ojibwe is characterized by a series of dialects that have local names and frequently local writing systems...
language, but supporting evidence is weak.
The Great Lakes syllabary is most accurately described as a syllabary
Syllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
that is based upon the characters of an alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
. Consonant and vowel letters that comprise a syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
are grouped into units that are separated by spacing from adjacent units. The system is of interest to students of writing systems because it represents a case of an alphabetic system evolving into a syllabary.
The syllabary is unrelated to the Cree syllabary
Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics
Canadian Aboriginal syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of abugidas used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and Athabaskan language families....
that was invented by James Evans to write Cree
Cree language
Cree is an Algonquian language spoken by approximately 117,000 people across Canada, from the Northwest Territories and Alberta to Labrador, making it the aboriginal language with the highest number of speakers in Canada. It is also spoken in the U.S. state of Montana...
and extended to a number of other Canadian indigenous languages.
Since it resembles cursive Roman script, it has not been included in Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
.
History and origins
The origin and early development of the system is not known. In 1880 when first reported, use of the syllabary was indicated to be widespread among speakers of Fox and Sac. Some remarks by Potawatomi speakers suggest that the first Potawatomi usage was in approximately the same period.Potawatomi does not have the phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
/h/, and instead has a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
/ʔ/ in places where Fox would have /h/. In Potawatomi the glottal stop is not represented in the syllabary, and in Fox /h/ is the only consonantal sound that is not represented. This anomaly in the inventory of consonant sounds has led to the suggestion that the syllabary was first used by speakers of Potawatomi, and subsequently transmitted to speakers of Fox, Sac, and Kickapoo. It would be otherwise difficult to explain why the /h/ sound is not included in the Fox versions of the syllabary even though the sound is not difficult to perceive, whereas the glottal stop, as in Potawatomi, often is.
Description
The syllabary is based upon “… a European cursive form of the roman alphabet.” Vowel letters are used to represent sounds that correspond with French writing conventions, suggesting a possible French source.Samples of the Fox version of the syllabary are in Jones (1906), and Walker (1981, 1996); the latter includes handwriting samples for each character or compound character from four different early twentieth-century Fox writers. Samples of the Potawatomi syllabary characters are in Walker (1981, 1986). Goddard (1996) includes a postcard written in the Fox syllabary, and Kinkade and Mattina (1996) includes a page of text in the Fox syllabary. Samples of the characters used in the Ho-Chunk syllabary are available at Ho-Chunk Syllabary.
Fox version
The versions of the syllabary used by the Fox, Sauk, and Kickapoo groups have only minor differences. This section outlines the main characteristics of the Fox variant, which is the most completely described in published sources. A brief discussion of the Sauk version has also been published.Fox speakers refer to the syllabary in both Fox and English as the pa·pe·pi·po·, referring to the first row of consonant plus vowel syllables in traditional presentations of the syllabary.
The core component of the Fox syllabary represents 48 syllables, 4 of which are vowels by themselves, in addition to compound characters that consist of 11 consonant symbols combined with one of the four vowel characters. The syllabary writes all the consonant and vowels sounds of Fox with the exception of /h/. As well, no distinction is made between long and short vowels. A sequence of two vowels in the syllabary typically indicates the presence of /h/ between the two vowels.
Syllables are separated by spaces. Punctuation consists of a word divider used to mark the end of a word and the beginning of the next word, “…which variously appears as a dot, a small line, or an
Several variants of the basic syllabary existed among Fox speakers, in which various symbols were substituted for combinations of consonant and vowel letters. These variants were apparently originally used as secret codes and were not widely utilized. Samples of the variant forms are in Walker (1981), from Jones (1906).
There are also minor variations in the form of the syllabary used by Kickapoo speakers, and Kickapoo speakers living in Mexico have added some orthographic modifications based on Spanish.
Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) adoption of the syllabary
The Fox version of the syllabary was adapted by speakers of Ho-Chunk (also known as Winnebago) subsequent to an encounter in NebraskaNebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
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
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
in 1884, a Winnebago speaker learned to write in the syllabary. Period reports indicate rapid adoption of the syllabary by Winnebago speakers in Nebraska and Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
. Winnebago phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
is significantly different from that of Fox-Sauk-Kickapoo and Potawatomi, with both more consonants and vowels, and the syllabary was adapted in order to accommodate some of these differences.
Anthropologist Paul Radin
Paul Radin
Paul Radin was a widely read American cultural anthropologist and folklorist of the early twentieth century. Born the son of a rabbi in the cosmopolitan Polish city of Łódź, he became a student of Franz Boas at Columbia, where he counted Edward Sapir and Robert Lowie among his classmates...
worked with Ho-Chunk speaker Sam Blowsnake to produce Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of an American Indian. This autobiography was based upon handwritten material composed by Blowsnake in the syllabary. Use of the syllabary declined over time; when Radin visited Winnebago communities in 1912 he reported that it was known only to a small number of people.
Possible Ottawa use of the syllabary
Some comments by OttawaOttawa language
Ottawa is a dialect of the Ojibwe language, spoken by the Ottawa people in southern Ontario in Canada, and northern Michigan in the United States. Descendants of migrant Ottawa speakers live in Kansas and Oklahoma...
speaker Andrew J. Blackbird
Andrew Blackbird
Andrew Jackson Blackbird was an "Odawa" Ottawa tribe leader and historian. He was author of the 1887 book, History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan.-Early life:...
“…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
Harbor Springs, Michigan
Harbor Springs is a city and resort community in Emmet County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 1,567 at the 2000 census.Harbor Springs is in a sheltered bay on the north shore of the Little Traverse Bay on Lake Michigan. The Little Traverse Lighthouse is a historic lighthouse on...
village on the Lower Peninsula of Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
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 syllabary. Blackbird’s Ottawa writings use a mixture of French and English-based characteristics, but not those of Great Lakes syllabary. There are no known Odawa texts written in the syllabary.
It has been suggested that Blackbird’s father may 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.
Ojibwa use of the syllabary
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 syllabary in corresponding with absent members of the tribe, it has little value to the ethnologist...." Smith then clarifies what he means by 'syllabary' and provides a syllabary table in the footnotes.Materials written in the syllabary
In the early twentieth century, Bureau of American EthnologyBureau of American Ethnology
The Bureau of American Ethnology was established in 1879 by an act of Congress for the purpose of transferring archives, records and materials relating to the Indians of North America from the Interior Department to the Smithsonian Institution...
linguist Truman Michelson
Truman Michelson
Truman Michelson was a linguist and anthropologist who worked from 1910 until his death for the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution...
engaged several Fox speakers to write stories using the Fox syllabary. 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
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
National Anthropological Archives
National Anthropological Archives
The National Anthropological Archives and Human Studies Film Archives are a collection of historical and contemporary documents maintained by the Smithsonian Institution, which document the history of anthropology and the world's peoples and cultures...
. A photograph of Michelson and prolific Fox writer Albert Kiyana appears in Kinkade and Mattina (1996). 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.
Correspondence table
Because Great Lakes Aboriginal syllabics is not part of the UnicodeUnicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
standards, glyphs for this table have been substituted with alphabetic type-set letters approximating their handwritten forms.
| Ho-Chunk | Potawatomi | Odawa | Meshkwaki | Ojibwe | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ' | ' | ' | ' | ' / h | |
| (A)² | h | h | h | h | |
| a¹ | a / á | a | a | a | a / aa |
| a(H)² | aa | ||||
| a(n)² | ą | an | |||
| a(Hn)² | aanh / aany | ||||
| b | p /b | ||||
| d | ž | sh | j | ||
| d(A)² | š / š' | ||||
| e | e / é | e / é | e | e³ | e |
| e(Hn)² | enh / eny | ||||
| g | -g | -g | kw / gw | ||
| H¹ | ǧ | ||||
| H(A)¹ ² | x / x' | ||||
| I¹ | y | y | y | y | |
| i | i / í | i | i | i³ | i / ii |
| i(n)² | į | in | |||
| i(H)² | ii | ||||
| i(Hn)² | iinh / iiny | ||||
| j | zh | ||||
| ĸ | g | g | g | k | k / g |
| ĸ(A)² | k / k' | k | k | ||
| l | b | b | b | p | |
| l(A)² | p / p' | p | p | ||
| m | m | m | m | m | m |
| n | n | n | n | n | n |
| o | o | o | o | o³ | o / oo |
| o(n)² | ų | on | |||
| o(H)² | oo | ||||
| o(Hn)² | oonh / oony | ||||
| oo | u | ||||
| oo(n)² | ų | ||||
| q | gw | gw / ġ | kw | ||
| q(A)² | kw | kw / ḳ | |||
| r | z | ||||
| r(A)² | s / s' | ||||
| s | r | z | z | s | s / z |
| s(A)² | s | s | |||
| sH | zh | zh | sh | ||
| sH(A)² | sh | sh | |||
| t | d | d | d | t / d | |
| t(A)² | t / t' | t | t | ||
| tt | j | j | j | ch | ch |
| tt(A)² | č / č' | ch | ch | ||
| u¹ | a | a | a | a | |
| w | w | w | w | w | w |
| x¹ | ǧ | ||||
| x(A)¹ ² | x / x' | ||||
| y¹ | y | y | y | y | y |
| ˙ | e³ | ||||
| . | i³ | ||||
| .. | o³ |
- ¹ Depending on the style, "a" or "u", "H" or "x", and "I" or "y" are used.
- ² The portion shown within the parentheses are not always written.
- ³ Meskwaki
, and may be shown using vowel dots instead of vowel letter.
See also
- Meshkwaki languageFox languageFox is an Algonquian language, spoken by around 1000 Fox, Sauk, and Kickapoo in various locations in the Midwestern United States and in northern Mexico...
- Menomini languageMenominee languageThe Menominee language is an Algonquian language originally spoken by the Menominee people of northern Wisconsin and Michigan. It is still spoken on the Menominee Nation lands in Northern Wisconsin in the United States....
- Odawa languageOttawa languageOttawa is a dialect of the Ojibwe language, spoken by the Ottawa people in southern Ontario in Canada, and northern Michigan in the United States. Descendants of migrant Ottawa speakers live in Kansas and Oklahoma...
- Potawatomi languagePotawatomi languagePotawatomi is a Central Algonquian language and is spoken around the Great Lakes in Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as in Kansas in the United States, and in southern Ontario in Canada, 1300 Potawatomi people, all elderly...
- Sac language
- Ho-Chunk languageWinnebago languageThe Winnebago language is the language of the Ho-Chunk tribe of Native Americans in the United States. The language is part of the Siouan language family, and is closely related to the languages of the Iowa, Missouri, and Oto...
External links
- Internet Archive of "Potawatomi syllabics", originally located at
http://www.potawatomilang.org - Ho-Chunk syllabics
- Foster's vocabulary list
- Trickster Takes Little Fox for a Ride – a Ho-Chunk story
- Potawatomi Words at Wisconsin Historical SocietyWisconsin Historical SocietyThe Wisconsin Historical Society is simultaneously a private membership and a state-funded organization whose purpose is to maintain, promote and spread knowledge relating to the history of North America, with an emphasis on the state of Wisconsin and the trans-Allegheny West...
collections (written with superfluous diacritic marks and use of "b" instead of "l")