I linked this story of the Cherokee syllabary in previous item. It’s worthwhile at the current moment, so reprinting it from 2023.
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Okie blogger K. Latham posted an interesting brief feature on the Cherokee Advocate, a weekly paper in Tahlequah that was first founded in 1844. I had noticed several early tribal newspapers in the Ayer newspaper lists but hadn’t stopped to think about the alphabet and fonts. I asked some questions about the source of the fonts, and Latham pointed to an even earlier paper, the Phoenix, which had developed the fonts.
The story of the Phoenix breaks our standard myths about tribal life, and also shows a unique moment in language. Sequoyah aka George Guess developed the syllabary in 1821. It was a perfect fit for the language, unlike most alphabetic systems. The Phoenix started printing its newspaper in 1828, which is a remarkable example of ‘early adoption’.
The written form of Cherokee was commonly printed before it was commonly handwritten.
No other form of writing was adopted in this sequence.
The story was told in an 1888 book published by the Smithsonian. The author described the unique problems of bootstrapping a printed form when the written form was not yet available.
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The Cherokee alphabet, invented by George Guess, a half-breed Cherokee who could not speak English, began to be discussed and read by the full-blood Indians, and, for the purpose of disseminating knowledge among that class, it was determined upon by the Council to have the Guess alphabet cast into type, and, as there were a number of missionaries in the Nation under the direction of the American Board of Missions, whose headquarters were in Boston, that place was chosen as the place where the new alphabet could be formed into type. The Rev Samuel Worcester, a prominent man in the mission, who had a good education, volunteered to look after the casting of this new font of type.
Very soon after the Cherokee Council had determined upon establishing the paper, Isaac Harris, a printer in Jasper, Tennessee, hearing of the intention of the Cherokees, went into the Nation and engaged to undertake the printing of the paper.
After Harris stated the conditions under which the work was to be done, we entered into an agreement to go to New Echota, the capital of the Cherokees, and be ready for commencing the paper by the first of January, 1828. We arrived at New Echota about the 23d of December, 1827. We found the press, type, etc had not arrived. We found the Rev Samuel Worcester, a missionary under the American Board, and Elias Boudinot, the editor of the paper, both intending to engage in the translation of the Scriptures into the Cherokee language, to be printed with the newly invented characters.
Mr Worcester had systematically arranged the characters, which can be better understood as something like the English ba, be, bi, bo, etc, using the Cherokee vowels at the head of each line. Mr Worcester furnished Mr Harris and myself with a handwritten guide to learn the alphabet. We had nothing to do for three or four weeks but to learn the alphabet, and it was more incomprehensible to us than Greek. For myself, I could not distinguish a single word in the talk of the Indians with each other, for it seemed to be a continuance of sounds.
[That’s true of all language.]
The house built for the printing-office was of hewed logs, about 30 feet long and 20 wide. The builders had cut out a log on each side 15 or 16 feet long, about two and a half feet above the floor, in which they had made a sash to fit. This we had to raise because the light was below the cases. Stands had to be made, a bank, and cases for the Cherokee type. The latter was something entirely new, as no pattern for a case to accommodate an alphabet containing 86 characters could be found.
I decided to make cases with boxes corresponding to the systematized alphabet as arranged by Mr Worcester. Accordingly we had the cases so made, one case being about three by three and one-half feet. This brought all the vowels, six in number, in the lower or nearest boxes, but the letters in the latter part of the alphabet were in the upper boxes and hard to reach. It took over 100 boxes for figures, points, etc, to each case. There were no capitals.
The Cherokee font was cast on a small pica body, and, as several of the Cherokee characters were taken from the English caps, the small caps of small pica were used. The press, a small royal size, was like none I ever saw before or since. It was of cast iron, with spiral springs to hold up the platen, at that time a new invention.
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Sidenote:
The phrase ‘spiral spring’ sounds like a watch mainspring, but books from the time commonly used it to describe the Hoe Washington Press:
where coil springs pull up the platen after the lever pushes it down.
This was an improvement over the earliest presses, based on wine presses, with a screw jack that had to make several turns both up and down, while inserting and removing the long lever at each half turn.
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Mr Green, the Secretary of the Mission Board, came out at the same time the material arrived. It was part of his business to put up the new press. It was a very simply constructed hand press, and any country printer could have put it together. At that day we had to use inking balls made of deerskin and stuffed with wool, as it was before the invention of composition rollers.
The first number of the Cherokee Phoenix (Tsalage Tsilehisanihi) was issued about the middle of February, 1828. There were three hands in the office – Harris, myself, and John Candy, a native half-blood who came as an apprentice. He could speak the Cherokee language and was of great help to me in giving words where they were not plainly written.
Harris had abandoned the learning of the Cherokee alphabet, and the setting of the Cherokee type fell to my lot. We had no imposing stone, and had to make up each page of the paper on a sled galley, put it on the press, and take proofs on slips of paper, and then correct it on the press, a very fatiguing way of correcting foul proof, which was the case with my first efforts at setting Cherokee type. It was a very foul proof, and a very troublesome and fatiguing job to correct it, as I did not know or understand a word of the language. But after a few weeks I became expert in setting up Cherokee matter, and as every letter or type had a thick body, it mounted up pretty fast. Translation from English into Cherokee was a very slow business; therefore we seldom had more than three columns each week.
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The Smithsonian account didn’t detail the actual design and casting of the type. Missionaries aren’t equipped for type founding, so Worcester must have paid an existing foundry to do the work. After the papers were up and running they would need occasional restock, so the foundry must have maintained the matrices and kept an inventory on hand. Major printing supply houses carried rare Euro languages at that time. Small orders were clearly worth the effort. Perhaps one foundry specialized in specialties?
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In the current moment, fashionable billionaire lovers constantly harp on the delicate peace-loving vulnerable Firsts Nations Indigenouses Peopleses who were universally slaughtered by Euros. The facts are vastly more complicated. The facts were commonly written in history books before the Deepstate coup of 1946.
Facts: Old tribes often slaughtered other tribes. Old tribes often slaughtered the Euro tribes, and both tribes often got along. Some of both old and new tribes were economically advanced before the two groups met. Some of both old and new tribes were uninterested in business.
The facts were well known in Oklahoma. Cherokees and Chickasaws were economic powers. They had been prosperous slaveholders in Dixie, and brought their slaves along on the Trail of Tears. They resumed being prosperous slaveholders in Oklahoma, and knew how to deal with their oil fortune when it came in 1920. They invested in property and business and senators. The Osage had been a warrior empire until 1500, when the other old tribes knocked down their empire. They didn’t know much besides war, so when the oil fortune came they used it differently but also successfully, forming a kind of Mutual Benefit Society that kept the Osage rich without economic power.
Polistra's Mill 