In a message dated 7/25/2002 1:13:58 PM Central Daylight Time, wood_owl@hotmail.com writes: > If you are referring to the story of Seqouia "inventing" a writing system > for the Cherokee, you might be interested to know that some traditinal > Cherokee claim that the writing system pre-dates European contact. > Apparently, it was used only by medicine people. Part of the reason, the > Cherokee re-acted so badly to what Sequoia did was that they felt that he > had betrayed their traditions. > George Ann, I wasn't specifically refering to Sequoia but that is a good analogy to what I was thinking. It seems to me that the Choctaw language in its written form was a very recent development and not really something that pre-dated the arrival of Europeans but something that was only a couple of hundred years old if that old. You mention that Cyrus Byington had a lot to do with it. It seems thought that he was not an Indian at all or am I wrong in thinking that. Personally, I think Sequoia did a noble thing in putting the Cherokee language in writing and the same goes for Byington. The ptetroglyphs, I think that's what they are called, of the Aztecs and Mayans would be a form of heiroglyphic writing that also predated the arrival of Europeans but it was of great importance, I think that the Spanish missionaries and the Aztecs themselves after the arrival of the missionaries set about developing and putting down on paper a written Nahuatl language for the Aztecs. That's my understanding of how the written Nahuatl language came about. John Craven New Orleans