ldly
avowed it to be a mere ingenious contrivance that the red man could
master, if he would try.

Repeated discussion on this point at length fully turned his thoughts
in this new channel. He seems to have disdained the acquirement of the
English language. Perhaps he suspected first what he was bound to know
before he completed his task, that the Cherokee language has certain
necessities and peculiarities of its own. It is almost impossible to
write Indian words and names correctly in English. The English alphabet
has not capacity for its expression. If ten white men sat down to write
the word an Indian uttered, the probabilities are that one half of them
would write them differently from the other half. It is this which has
led to such endless confusion in Indian dictionaries. For instance, we
write the word for the tribe Cherokee, and the letter R, or its sound,
is scarcely used in their language. Today a Cherokee always pronounces
it Chalaque, the pronunciation being between that and Shalakke. On
these peculiarities it is not the purpose of this article to enter, but
hasten to George Gist, brooding over a written language for his people.

His first essay was natural enough. He tried to invent symbols to
represent words. These he sometimes cut out of bark with his knife, but
generally wrote, or rather drew. With these symbols he would carry on a
conversation with a person in another apartment. As may be supposed,
his symbols multiplied fearfully and wonderfully. The Indian languages
are rich in their creative power. By using pieces of well-known words
that contain the prominent idea, double or compound words are freely
made. This has been called by writers treating this subject, the
polysynthetic. It is, in fact, a jumbling of sentences into words, by
abbreviation, the omitted parts of words being implied or understood.
There is one important fact which I will merely note here that is
generally overlooked. These compounded words, to a large extent,
represent the intrusive or European idea. The names the Indians gave
many of the European things were mere DEFINITIONS. Such as "Big
Knives," etc. Occasionally they made a dash at the French or English
sounds, as in the word "Yengees" for English, which has finally been
corrupted in our language to Yankees.

Of course an attempt at fixed symbols for words was an unhappy
experiment in a language one prominent element of which is, the
facility of making words out of piece