Hidden Literacies

Illegibility of Handwritten Documents

The illegibility of handwritten documents in archives can present considerable challenge to readers. Decoding letters and characters in handwritten documents presents a necessary first step in finding the word-for-word meaning in a document. But the real excitement and challenge of working with early American archival documents begins when one connects that literal meaning to the larger meaningfulness that the text has for its audiences then and now. Witness Walter Duncan’s letter to his mother, Dollie Duncan, written from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 1951. On the one hand it is remarkably legible as a sample of handwriting in the Cherokee language using the eighty-six character Sequoyan syllabary. The handwriting itself closely matches the print that was by that time ubiquitous in Cherokee Baptist churches and households (Kilpatrick and Kilpatrick). On the other hand, it is remarkably illegible to those trained to read any language written in the roman alphabet. What does it take for readers to understand the Sequoyan characters, Ꮢ-Ꭿ-Ᏸ-Ꭲ, not as the string of letters R-A-B-and T, but rather as ᏒᎯᏰᎢ /svhiyei/ evening? Breaking out of the alphabetic bias, then, is the necessary first step in order to gather meaning from this document.1

The next step involves building the larger understanding of meaning from each word in this document, what this document meant to Dollie and Walter as the remarkable feat it was to be written in the first place from that context, and what this document marks in the long march of the history of writing for Cherokee people. Figure 2 presents the free translation of this letter while Figure 5 offers the word-for-word interlinear translation.2 This remarkably clear written example of Cherokee writing is at once highly legible and illegible — begging the question of legibility as a key indicator of what is seen and unseen in the writing of Cherokee people and in the early Americas generally. This letter, and the translations of it offered herein, are an invitation to take up research and work with indigenous writings in archives around the country and the world to begin to find not just their meaning, but their meaningfulness as examples of writing in the early Americas and for indigenous peoples’ perseverance.

Walter Duncan wrote this letter using the Cherokee syllabary, an eighty-six-character writing system invented by Sequoyah during the first decade of the nineteenth century and later adopted by the Cherokee tribal council in 1821. The writing system itself was remarkably easy to learn, and spread throughout the nation within three-five years of its introduction without the aid of print or mass education. Long before this document was written on Oklahoma State Penitentiary stationary, the Cherokee syllabary had been widely adopted by the Cherokee people who had published thousands of pages of print and handwritten pages. Let’s begin with a close look at the materiality of this document before moving on to its translation and situation within the larger social scene of Cherokee writing.
 
 

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