SECT. III.] SOUTHERN INDIANS EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 93 which is occasionally a syllable, you have the whole number of possible syllables in the language, those excepted which result from the combinations of s united to another following conso- nant, with the six vowels. It would have required about thirty additional characters, if Guess, adhering to his principle, had made a new one for each such combination, (sta, ste, &c, spa, spe, &c.) He gave a strong proof of talent, in discover- ing that he might dispense with those thirty, by making for the s a distinct character.* It wanted but one step more, and to have also given a distinct character to each consonant, to reduce the whole number to sixteen, and to have had an alpha- bet similar to ours. In practice, however, and as applied to his own language, the superiority of Guess's alphabet is mani- fest, and has been fully proved by experience. You must indeed learn and remember eighty-five characters instead of twenty-five. But this once accomplished, the education of the pupil is completed, he can read, and he is perfect in his ortho- graphy without making it the subject of a distinct study. The boy learns in a few weeks that which occupies two years of the time of ours. It is that peculiarity in the vocal or nasal ter- mination of syllables and that absence of double consonants, more discernible to the ear than to the eye, which were alluded to, when speaking of some affinity in that respect between the Cherokee and the Iroquois languages. It is true that the original idea of expressing sounds by characters was suggested to Guess by our books ; it must be admitted that his plan would have failed if applied to perhaps any other language than the Cherokee ; and it is doubtful whether, in such case, he would have ascended to the discovery of one character for each analyzed sound. But it cannot be denied that this untaught Indian, in what he has performed, has exhibited a striking instance of the native intelligence of his race.-f
- When Guess subsequently explained the process of his invention,
he said that what had cost him most labor was the hissing sound. Guess's characters amount to eighty-five, viz. seventy-seven as above stated, less one, the syllable mung not appearing in the language. Finding that occasionally k was pronounced g ; d like t ; and two distinct as- pirations connected with na, he has added eight characters representing the sounds s, ka, hna, nah, ta, te, ti, tla. f Although this syllabic alphabet has been published several times, it has been thought consistent with the object of this essay to annex a correct copy of it. — See Appendix.
