| Feature Article – April 2008 |
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Some say there is a mystery waiting to be solved in the Anglican hymn book. If you look in the 1998 edition you will see that all the hymns written in dialects of the Algonquian language use not only English words, but also syllabics. The origin of these syllabic characters, still in use, has never been determined.
We do know that the syllabics were first used in Manitoba by Methodist missionary James Evans. In August of 1840 Evans (with his wife, Mary Blithe), moved to Norway House, about 650 km north of Winnipeg, to take up the position of Superintendent of the North West Indian missions. The summer following his arrival Evans employed locals to build a small church and about 20 houses for the new residents. He learned the language of the northern Cree and devised a writing system of nine basic shapes which could be rotated to represent the 36 principal sounds of the Cree dialect.
Evans’ first publication using the syllabary was a small hymn book printed on birch bark with ink concocted from sturgeon oil and soot. Denied support for a printing press from his superiors, he forged his own type from the lead lining of tea chests. With surprising speed, the northern Cree adopted syllabics. By winter of 1841 many Cree at Norway House had already learned to read and write their spoken language using syllabics. Cree trading networks and missionaries soon spread the new literacy to York Factory, Fort Severn, and east to Moose Factory, Ontario. The syllabic system spread west just as rapidly. By 1843 Cree Chief Maskepetoon, wrote letters in syllabics to missionary Robert Rundle at Rocky Mountain House. Within less than a decade the syllabary had spread from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic shore. By the 1860’s both the Dene and the Inuit were using the system. Historian Olive Dickason wrote, “. . . so that by the end of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth the Cree had one of the highest literacy rates in the world”. (Canada’s First Nations 241, 1992).
The origin of the nine basic shapes, the building blocks of the syllabic system, remains a mystery. Cree narratives say that the syllabics were a gift of the Creator to two elders: Mistanaskowew (Badger Bull) from the West and Machiminahtik (Hunting Rod) from the East. These two persons, although far apart, received the gift at the same time and it was from them that James Evans learned the syllabics. Many elders point out, and there is convincing evidence, that the syllabic characters are derived from pre-contact Native designs and the fact that they spread so rapidly indicates that they were a good fit with nothern lifeways. Northerners lived in small hunting groups and syllabics could be readily learned within the family. In fact, for Cree speakers, the system is readily understood, although it takes considerable practice to use syllabics fluently.
A different story though, tells of great interest in new systems of shorthand writing in Europe at this time. For example, in the 1830’s James Frere created a system using simple shapes for the illiterate and the blind; Thomas Lucas designed shapes for embossing books for the blind; and Isaac Pitman’s 1837 Stenographic Sound Hand became a staple of the business world. Evans was no doubt familiar with these efforts (in fact he developed a fairly successful writing system for the blind himself) and also with Native communication systems such as the Ojibwe birch bark scrolls. It is also rumoured that Evans stayed at the home of John Dugald Cameron on Lake Superior and that there he read books on ancient languages that were known to be in Cameron’s library.
Whatever their origin, the syllabics greatly facilitated missionizing efforts. Bishop of Moosonee, John Horden, “saw at once that the syllabic system of writing had gained a decided foothold among the Cree of James Bay” (John Long. Canadian Journal of Native Studies 322,1986). A century later, in the 1980s, when I asked for a song, the old hunters still relied on the syllabic writing of the hymns. With few exceptions, the elderly Cree would request that the prayer book and hymnary be brought to them before they would sing. One elder said to me, “I can’t sing a hymn without looking at a book”. Their treasured hymnaries, in brightly coloured fabric drawstring bags, were carried back and forth between the settlement and the hunting camps.
Surely, the syllabic system is rooted in ancient characters of Native and/or non-Native origin and, some would say, were mediated, by Reverend James Evans, between the spirit and the physical world. In fact, this system is a good example of philosopher-physicist Karl Popper’s three worlds:
In this case, the Aboriginal explanation, the Creator as the source of the idea, provides the criterion for World 3; the non-Native explanation, i.e. James Evans and his linguistic ability, knowledge and work, fulfills Popper’s World 2. (Most of us don’t quibble with World 1, for physical objects are readily experienced). Many Anglicans would agree that it requires both the Native and non-Native approaches described above to explain an idea that changed a people.