The help afforded to linguistic studies by the books published in and upon the Indian languages is valuable only for a few among the great number of the dialects. The majority of them are laid down in phonetically defective missionary alphabets, about which we are prompted to repeat what the citizens of the young colony of Mexico wrote to the government of Spain, in Cortez's time: "Send to us pious and Christian men, as preachers, bishops and missionaries, but do not send us scholars, who, with their pettifogging distinctions and love of contention, create nothing but disorder and strife."[1] In the same manner, some Creek scholars and churchmen agreed five times in succession, before 1853, upon standard alphabets to be followed in transcribing Creek, but, as Judge G. W. Stidham justly remarks, _made it worse each time_. To arrive at trustworthy results, it is therefore necessary to investigate the forms of speech as they are in use among the Indians themselves.