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 pieces of words, or compounded
words. Besides this difficulty, no language can be taught
successfully by means of a dictionary, until the human memory
acquires more power. Three years of hopeless struggle with the
mighty debris of his symbols left him, although in the main
reticent, a mighty man of words. But his labors were not lost.
Through that heroic, unaided struggle he gained the first true
glimpses into the elements of language. It is a startling fact,
that an uneducated man, of a race we are pleased to call
barbarians, attained in a few years, without books or tutors, what
was developed through several ages of Phoenician, Egyptian, and
Greek wisdom.
Se-quo-yah discovered that the language possessed certain musical
sounds, such as we call vowels, and dividing sounds, styled by us
consonants. In determining his vowels he varied during the
progress of his discoveries, but finally settled on the six--A, E,
I, O, U, and a guttural vowel sounding like U in UNG.
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