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Reading the ‘Cheyenne Letter’: Towards a Typology of Inscription beyond the Alphabet

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Approaches to the History of Written Culture

Part of the book series: New Directions in Book History ((NDBH))

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Abstract

The dominance of the Western alphabet as a model for all sign systems creates difficulty when we try to account for non-alphabetic systems such as Blackfoot petroglyphs. Yet historically non-Western societies have successfully created, stored and transmitted their knowledge in a multitude of formats and on many different kinds of material. This chapter presents a nineteenth-century Cheyenne letter to call conventional definitions of writing into question. The analysis raises questions about how such peoples communicate using marks on material objects, and suggests a more inclusive typology of writing. It proposes to interrogate all ‘inscription’ with a programme of questions: is the substrate natural? Monumental? Portable? Is the society sedentary? Hunter-gatherer? Are signs semasiographic? Phonographic? What is the direction of reading? Who controls the writing culture?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Garrick Mallery, Picture-writing of the American Indians (1888–89, reissued in two volumes), New York (Dover), 1972, pp. 363–364. (Mallery 1972) It is possible that the Letter was re-drawn for publication, and several remarks of Mallery in his section on Native name glyphs (1:445–460) indicate he was anxious that such images should be accurate.

  2. 2.

    Candace Greene (Smithsonian Institution), personal communication, 19 June 2015.

  3. 3.

    G. A. Dorsey, The Cheyenne, no place – probably Chicago (Field Columbian Museum Anthropological Series 9.1), 1905, p. 11.(Dorsey 1905).

  4. 4.

    Stephen Houston, ‘Writing in early Mesoamerica,’ in Stephen Houston, ed., The first writing: script invention as history and process, Cambridge, UK (Cambridge University Press), 2004, pp. 274–309 (Houston 2004); Frank Salomon, The cord keepers: khipus and cultural life in a Peruvian village, Durham, NC (Duke University Press), 2004 (Salomon 2004); Elizabeth Hill Boone, Stories in red and black, Austin, TX (University of Texas Press), 2000 (Hill Boone 2000) and her Their way of writing Washington, DC (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection), 2011 (Boone 2011); Heidi Bohaker, ‘Nindoodemag: The significance of Algonquian kinship networks in the Eastern Great Lakes region 1600–1701,’ William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 63:1, 2006, pp. 23–52 (Bohaker 2006) and her ‘Indigenous histories and archival media in the early modern Great Lakes,’ in Colonial mediascapes: Sensory worlds of the early Americas, ed. Matt Cohen and Jeffrey Glover, Lincoln NE (University of Nebraska Press), 2014, pp. 99–137.(Cohen and Glover 2014).

  5. 5.

    Albertine Gaur, A History of writing (revised edition), New York (Cross River Press), 1992, p. 14.(Gaur 1992)

  6. 6.

    Paul Bouissac, ‘Art or script? A falsifiable semiotic hypothesis,’ Semiotica 100, 1994, p. 352. (Bouissac 1994).

  7. 7.

    ‘Writing’ in Encyclopedia Britannica (15th edition, 1975), vol. 29, p. 985. Gelb was responsible for the initial systematic overview, pp. 982–989.

  8. 8.

    The World’s writing systems, ed. Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, New York (Oxford University Press), 1996, p. 3 (Daniels and Bright 1996).

  9. 9.

    John DeFrancis, Visible speech: The diverse oneness of writing systems, Honolulu (University of Hawaii Press), 1989, p. 47. (DeFrancis 1989).

  10. 10.

    Ibid., p. 35.

  11. 11.

    David Diringer, Writing, New York (Frederick Praeger) 1962, p. 13.(Diringer 1962).

  12. 12.

    Richard Sproat, ‘A statistical comparison of written language and nonlinguistic symbol systems,’ Language 90:2, June 2014, pp. 457–481 (Sproat 2014).

  13. 13.

    Barry B. Powell, Writing: Theory and history of the technology of civilization, Oxford (Wiley-Blackwell), 2009, pp. 23 and 36 (Powell 2009).

  14. 14.

    Geoffrey Sampson, Writing systems (second edition), Sheffield (Equinox), 2015, p. 22.(Sampson 2015).

  15. 15.

    Archibald A. Hill, ‘The Typology of writing systems,’ in Papers in linguistics in honor of Léon Dostert, ed. William A. Austin, The Hague (Mouton), 1967, pp. 92–99.(Hill 1967).

  16. 16.

    Gaur, A History of writing, p. 14.

  17. 17.

    James D. Keyser and Michael Klassen, Plains Indian rock art, Seattle (University of Washington Press) and Vancouver (University of British Columbia Press), 2001, Chapter 15, ‘Biographic tradition,’ pp. 224–256.(Keyser and Klassen 2001).

  18. 18.

    Powell, Writing: Theory and history, p. 36.

  19. 19.

    Kathryn E. Piquette and Ruth D. Woodhouse, ‘Developing an approach to writing as material practice,’ in Writing as material practice: Substance, surface and medium, ed. Piquette and Woodhouse, London (Ubiquity), 2013, pp. 1–13 (Piquette and Woodhouse 2013).

  20. 20.

    Curtis W. Marean, ‘Pinnacle Point Cave 13B (Western Cape Province, South Africa) in context: The Cape floral kingdom, shellfish, and modern human origins,’ Journal of Human Evolution 59:3–4, Sept.–Oct. 2010, pp. 425–443.(Marean 2010).

  21. 21.

    Thomas Givón, ‘Iconicity, isomorphism, and non-arbitrary coding in syntax,’ in Iconicity in syntax, ed. John Haiman, Amsterdam (John Benjamins), 1985, p. 189 (Givón 1985).

  22. 22.

    John Baines, Visual and written culture in ancient Egypt, Oxford (Oxford University Press), 2007, pp. 131–140, especially p. 137(Baines 2007).

  23. 23.

    Luca Zaghetto, ‘Iconography and language: The missing link,’ in Literacy and the state in the ancient Mediterranean, ed. Kathryn Lomas, Ruth D. Whitehouse, and John B. Wilkins, London (Accordia Research Institute), 2007, pp. 171–181.(Zaghetto 2007).

  24. 24.

    John M. D. Pohl, Narrative Mixtec ceramics of ancient Mexico, Princeton (Princeton University Program in Latin American Studies), 2007, pp. 3 and 41.(Pohl 2007).

  25. 25.

    Keyser and Klassen, Plains Indian rock art, passim, but see especially ‘Biographic tradition,’ pp. 224–256.

  26. 26.

    Jack Steinbring, ‘Elemental forms of rock art and the peopling of the Americas,’ in The Rock-Art of eastern North America: Capturing images and insight, ed. Carol Diaz-Granados and James R. Duncan, Tuscaloosa, AL (University of Alabama Press), 2004, pp. 139–143.(Diaz-Granados and Duncan 2004).

  27. 27.

    Frank Salomon and Sabine Hyland, ‘Graphic pluralism: Native American systems of inscription and the colonial situation’, Ethnohistory 57:1, Winter 2010, p. 2.(Salomon and Hyland 2010).

  28. 28.

    Sproat, ‘A statistical comparison,’ p. 478.

  29. 29.

    Ruth Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner, ‘Art, authenticity, and the baggage of cultural encounter,’ in Unpacking culture: Arts and commodities in colonial and post-colonial worlds, eds. Phillips and Steiner, Berkeley, CA (University of California Press), 1999, pp. 3–19 (Phillips and Steiner 1999).

  30. 30.

    Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The cosmos of a sixteenth-century miller, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi, Baltimore (Johns Hopkins University Press), 1980, p. xvii.(Ginzburg 1980).

  31. 31.

    Candace Greene, ‘Culture and meaning in Cheyenne ledger art,’ in Plains Indian drawings, 1865–1935: Pages from a visual history, ed. Janet Berlo, New York (Harry N. Abrams for The American Federation of Arts and the Drawing Center), 1996, p. 26.(Greene 1996).

  32. 32.

    On name glyphs see Mallery, Picture-writing, pp. 445–460; Keyser and Klassen, Plains Indian rock art, p. 266; Black Elk and John G. Niehardt, Black Elk Speaks, Lincoln, NE (University of Nebraska Press), 2014, plates 2a and 2b (Elk and Niehardt 2014).

  33. 33.

    Greene, ‘Culture and Meaning,’ p. 29.

  34. 34.

    Renate Schukies, Red Hat: Cheyenne blue sky maker and keeper of the sacred arrows, Münster (Lit Verlag), 1993, p. 86 (Schukies 1993); for the status of Arrow-Keeper see Peter J. Powell, Sweet medicine, Norman, OK (University of Oklahoma Press), 1969, vol. 2, pp. 486 and 875–895.(Powell 1969).

  35. 35.

    We can only speculate why the substantial sum of 53 dollars was specified. Little-Man needed funds for the journey, which might have taken a few weeks on horseback, and possibly longer if he had to transfer from one to another of the emerging new railway lines. Or on leaving home he may have been instructed to bring certain commodities on his return. The computation most likely falls into the ‘historic standard of living’ category; see http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/relativevalue.php (accessed 9 October 2015).

  36. 36.

    A warrior ‘counted coup’ by touching an enemy during the fray; this was considered a much more daring and courageous act than merely killing him.

  37. 37.

    Evan M. Maurer, ‘Robe’ [Paris: Musée du quai Branly 71.1886.17.1], in The Plains Indians: artists of earth and sky, ed. Gaylord Torrence, Paris (Torrence 2014), p. 94, and see plate 95.

  38. 38.

    A Lakota war book from the Little Big Horn: The pictographic ‘Autobiography of Half Moon’, ed. Castle McLaughlin, Cambridge, MA (Houghton Library of the Harvard Library and Peabody Museum Press), 2013, pp. 49–68.(McLaughlin 2013).

  39. 39.

    Tipi: the characteristic conical hide dwelling or teepee of the plains; travois: a kind of sledge made of two poles joined by a frame and drawn by an animal.

  40. 40.

    Keyser and Klassen, Plains Indian rock art, p. 59.

  41. 41.

    John C. Ewers, Plains Indian painting: A description of an aboriginal American art, Stanford, CA (Stanford University Press), 1939) p. 7 (Ewers 1939), an important early study with many black-and-white illustrations. A recent exhibition catalogue with a number of fine colour reproductions of inscribed plains artefacts is Torrence, The Plains Indians: artists of earth and sky.

  42. 42.

    Figure 14.31, in Keyser and Klassen, Plains Indian rock art, p. 251.

  43. 43.

    Arni Brownstone, ‘Blackfoot Robe,’ Every object has a story: Extraordinary Canadians celebrate the Royal Ontario Museum, ed. J. Macfarlane, Toronto (Royal Ontario Museum), 2014, pp. 24–30 (Brownstone 2014a).

  44. 44.

    Christina E. Burke, ‘Waniyetu Wówapi: An introduction to the Lakota winter count tradition,’ in The Year the stars fell, ed. Candace S. Greene and Russell Thornton, Washington, DC (Smithsonian National Museum) and Lincoln, NE (University of Nebraska Press), 2007, pp. 1–4 (Burke 2007); Barbara Risch, ‘A Grammar of time: Lakota winter counts, 1700–1900,’ American Indian Culture and Research Journal 24.2, 2000, pp. 23–48.(Risch 2000).

  45. 45.

    Galen Brokaw, ‘Semiotics, aesthetics, and the Quechua concept of Quilca,’ in Cohen and Glover, Colonial mediascapes, p. 191.

  46. 46.

    Ewers, Plains Indian painting, pp. 3–7.

  47. 47.

    Arni Brownstone, ‘European influence in the Mandan-Hidatsa graphic works collected by Prince Maximilian of Wied,’ American Indian Art Magazine 39:3, 2014, pp. 58–70, especially p. 66.(Brownstone 2014b)

  48. 48.

    McLaughlin, A Lakota war book, p. 61 and passim.

  49. 49.

    Germaine Warkentin, ‘Dead metaphor or working model? “The Book” in Native America,’ in Cohen and Glover, Colonial mediascapes, pp. 54–55.

  50. 50.

    Selwyn Dewdney and Kenneth E. Kidd, Indian rock paintings of the Great Lakes, Toronto (University of Toronto Press), 1962, pp. 109–116 (Dewdney and Kidd 1962); on notational practices Heidi Bohaker, ‘Indigenous histories and archival media in the early modern Great Lakes,’ in Cohen and Glover, Colonial mediascapes, pp. 109–116.

  51. 51.

    David L. Schmidt and Murdena Marshall, ed. and trans., Mi’kmaq hieroglyphic prayers: Readings in North America’s first indigenous script, Halifax, NS (Nimbus), 1995, pp. 4–8 (Schmidt and Marshall 1995).; Bruce Greenfield, ‘The Mi’kmaq hieroglyphic prayer book: Writing and Christianity in maritime Canada, 1675–1921,’ in The Language encounter in the Americas, 1492–1800, ed. Edward G. Gray and Norman Fiering, New York (Berghahn), 2000, pp. 189–212.(Greenfield 2000).

  52. 52.

    Fred E. Coy, Jr., ‘Native American dendroglyphs of the eastern woodlands,’ in Diaz-Granados and Duncan, The Rock-art of Eastern North America, pp. 3–16.

  53. 53.

    Hill, The Typology of Writing Systems, pp. 92 and 94–5, my italics.

  54. 54.

    David Olson, The World on Paper, Cambridge, UK (Cambridge University Press), 1994, especially pp. 261–265.(Olson 1994)

  55. 55.

    The development of a full database, with images, would not be impossible; an example is InscriptiFact, which focuses on inscribed objects of the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean: http://www.inscriptifact.com/index.shtml A similar comprehensive project, though not specifically oriented towards inscriptions, is GRASAC, The Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures: https://grasac.org/gks/gks_about.php.

  56. 56.

    Roy Harris, Signs of writing, London (Routledge), 1995, p. 22.(Harris 1995).

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  1. Department of English, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    Germaine Warkentin

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  1. University of New South Wales , Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Martyn Lyons

  2. Centro de Linguística, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Rita Marquilhas

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Warkentin, G. (2017). Reading the ‘Cheyenne Letter’: Towards a Typology of Inscription beyond the Alphabet. In: Lyons, M., Marquilhas, R. (eds) Approaches to the History of Written Culture. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54136-5_8

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