Curiosity Has It's Own Reason for Existing
The Bryan Museum in Galveston is a wonder (www.thebryanmuseum.org). While Mickey and I were down that way recently to hear J.P. Bryan himself interview Stephen Harrigan about this his new book, Big Wonderful Thing, we took the opportunity to explore some of the collections.
The room with the Texana material is the largest in the building, and for my interests, the most intriguing. Original, historic documents and armaments were seemingly everywhere, but the dominant features in the room were the diorama of the Battle of the Alamo and the marble statue of my all-time fave, Sam Houston.
And then there was this. In the corner. Literally IN the corner.
In one of the far corners, behind a bump out for some supporting structure, there were two framed documents on the wall. Simply to notice them took an act of curiosity. One of the documents was a letter from Sam Houston to “Col. Bowl”, the Cherokee Chief, regarding a treaty and the land title that Houston had promised. I had seen that document mentioned before.
But this second little scrap of paper held something new and incredibly exciting. The placard next to the document described it briefly. The words lit up my brain like lightning.
These nine words separated by dots have no regular meaning in the (Cherokee) syllabary, and they are suspected to be in code or to reference missing text.
I still have visions of writing a historical fiction that incorporates the story of the expulsion of Bowle’s Cherokees from Texas, so the idea that this could be some secret message was immediately exciting on many levels. But what did it say? What were the nine words? I had to know.
That’s were my curiosity kicked in.
When I reached out to the curator at the museum, I learned this particular item came in a collection mixed with other documents of the 1820s, some pertaining to the Fredonian Rebellion and other pre-Revolutionary activities in Nacogdoches. In 2008, the curator “ran across” it when cataloging their acquisition of papers from the family of Haden H. Edwards. Edwards was the failed empresario who put Nicholas Trammell at the Trinity River crossing of the El Camino Real.
An attempt at a translation of the document back in 2008 interpreted the writing as nine unrelated words. The dots confused the translator, however, so nothing of substance came of that effort.
Michael Boyett’s sculpture, The Treaty, with Sam Houston and Chief Bowles. In Nacogdoches.
