MALLERY.] SYLLABARIES AND ALPHABETS. 665 
manence to his thoughts, he first resorted to the designs of picture- 
writing, already known and used, to express the sounds of his speech. 
The study of different systems of writing—such as the Chinese, the 
Assyrian, and the Egyptian—shows that no people ever invented an 
arbitrary system of writing or originated a true alphabet by any fixed 
predetermination. All the known graphic systems originated in pic- 
ture-writing. All have passed through the stage of conventionalism to 
that commonly called the hieroglyphic, while from the latter, directly 
or after an intermediate stage, sprang the syllabary which used modi- 
fications of the old ideograms and required a comparatively small 
number of characters. Finally, among the more civilized of ancient 
races the alphabet was gradually introduced as a simplification of the 
syllabary, and still further reduced the necessary characters. 
The old ideograms were, or may be supposed to have been, intelligible 
to all peoples without regard to their languages. In this respect they 
resembled the Arabic and Roman numerals which are understood 
by many nations of diverse speech when written while the sound of 
the words figured by them is unintelligible. Their number, however, 
was limited only by the current ideas, which might become infinite. 
Also each idea was susceptible of preservation in different forms, and 
might readily be misinterpreted; therefore the simplicity and precision 
of alphabetic writing amply compensated for its exclusiveness. 
The high development of pictorial writing in Mexico and Central 
America is well known. Some of these peoples had commenced the 
introduction of phonetics into their graphic system, especially in the 
rendering of proper names, which probably also was the first step in 
that direction among the Egyptians. But Prof. Cyrus Thomas (b) 
makes the following remark upon the Maya system, which is of general 
application : 
It is certain, and even susceptible of demonstration, that a large portion, perhaps 
the majority, of the characters are symbols. 
The more I study these characters the stronger becomes the conviction that they 
have grown out of a pictographic system similar to that common among the Indians 
of North America. The first step in advance appears to have been to indicate, by 
characters, the gesture signs. 
It is not possible now to discuss the many problems contained in the 
vast amount of literature on the subject of the Mexican and Central 
American writing, and it is the less necessary because much of the 
literature is recent and easily accessible. With regard to the Indian 
tribes north of Mexico, it is not claimed that more than one system of 
characters resembling a syllabary or alphabet was invented by any of 
them. The Cherokee alphabet, so called, was adopted from the Roman 
by Sequoya, also called George Gist, about A. D.1520, and was ingenious 
and very valuable to the tribe, but being an imitation of an old invention 
it has no interest in relation to the present topic. The same is mani- 
festly true regarding the Cree alphabet, which was of missionary origin. 
