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Uyaquq (also Uyaquk or Uyakoq; sometimes referred to in English as Helper Neck) (ca. 1860–1924) was a member of the Yup'ik people who became a Helper in the
Moravian Church The Moravian Church, or the Moravian Brethren ( or ), formally the (Latin: "Unity of the Brethren"), is one of the oldest Protestant denominations in Christianity, dating back to the Bohemian Reformation of the 15th century and the original ...
. Noted for his linguistic abilities, he went from being an illiterate adult to inventing a series of writing systems for his native language and then producing translations of the
Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...
and other religious works in a period of five years.


Biography

Uyaquq was born into a family of
shaman Shamanism is a spiritual practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with the spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into ...
s in the lower Kuskokwim River valley of central
Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...
in the mid-1860s. Even by the standards of the day, Uyaquq was a small man. He became a shaman in early adulthood, but converted to
Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...
after his father converted. Although his father became a
Russian Orthodox The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...
, Uyaquq became a leader and missionary in the Alaskan Moravian Church. His name means "
Neck The neck is the part of the body in many vertebrates that connects the head to the torso. It supports the weight of the head and protects the nerves that transmit sensory and motor information between the brain and the rest of the body. Addition ...
"Jacobson, Steven A. (2012)
Yup'ik Eskimo Dictionary, 2nd edition
Alaska Native Language Center.
in English and he was called that by some English speakers. As a missionary, Uyaquq is said to have converted whole villages of Yupik in the lower Kuskokwim River valley to Christianity. He is said to have had a gentle personality and have been a very erudite speaker. Uyaquq was fascinated by the idea that the English-speaking Moravians could quote a passage of scripture several times using exactly the same words each time. He discovered that they accomplished this by reading from a written text. Uyaquq became fascinated with the idea of writing and, according to his descendants, received the idea for the first version of the script he used to write his dialect, Yugtun, in a dream. Reverend John Hinz, a Moravian missionary in Alaska, and an accomplished
linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
, was astonished upon hearing of Uyaquq's invention. Hinz took Uyaquq to the Bethel mission house so that he could continue his linguistic work. Uyaquq is said to have written constantly during the trip, writing as many stories from the Bible as he could in the new script without stopping to sleep. Hinz and the Kilbucks aided Uyaquq by telling him scriptures, but Uyaquq refused to learn to read or write English, as he thought that English literacy would make him lose his identity as a Yupik. In the next five years, Uyaquq's
Yugtun script The Yugtun or Alaska script is a syllabary invented around the year 1900 by Uyaquq to write the Central Alaskan Yup'ik language. Uyaquq, who was monolingual in Yup'ik but had a son who was literate in English, initially used Indigenous pictogram ...
evolved from its original form of pictographs to a
syllabary In the Linguistics, linguistic study of Written language, written languages, a syllabary is a set of grapheme, written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) mora (linguistics), morae which make up words. A symbol in a syllaba ...
. This evolution began when Uyaquq decided that his hieroglyphics were a good memory aid but they did not represent passages with enough accuracy that they could be reproduced verbatim time after time. Uyaquq identified the concept of a
syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
and his script evolved in five stages until he had created a symbol for each syllable in the language. Each of the five steps was documented in several notebooks kept by Uyaquq. He taught his writing system to several of his missionary helpers and they used it in their church work. Although the system adopted by most people for writing Yupik was the Roman-based script of Reverend Hinz, and, in about 1970, the University of Alaska system, Uyaquq's system has been studied because it may represent the same process of evolution from
illiteracy Literacy is the ability to read and write, while illiteracy refers to an inability to read and write. Some researchers suggest that the study of "literacy" as a concept can be divided into two periods: the period before 1950, when literacy was ...
to
proto-writing Proto-writing consists of visible marks communication, communicating limited information. Such systems emerged from earlier traditions of symbol systems in the early Neolithic, as early as the 7th millennium BC in History of China, China a ...
to syllabary taken by many ancient written languages, like Chinese and
Egyptian ''Egyptian'' describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of year ...
, but compressed into a period of five years. Uyaquq's notebooks and the writings of those who watched him at work have been the subject of research, beginning with Dr. Alfred Schmitt in the 1930s.Schmitt, Alfred. 1951. Die Alaska- Schrift und Ihre Schriftgeschichtliche Bedeutung. (Münstersche Forschungen 4.) Marburg: Simons.


References


External links


Yugtun cursive syllabary
{{Moravian Church Navigation 1860s births 1924 deaths 20th-century Alaska Native people American Protestant missionaries American people of the Moravian Church Converts to Protestantism from pagan religions Creators of writing systems History of the Alaska Province of the Moravian Church Moravian Church missionaries People from Bethel Census Area, Alaska Religious leaders from Alaska Year of birth uncertain Yupik people Protestant missionaries in the United States Christian missionaries in Alaska Linguists of Eskaleut languages Missionary linguists