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Chief Sequoyah
Warriors Citation
Sequoyah was the inventor of the Cherokee alphabet and a Native American leader. His name is also spelled Sequoia or Sikwayi.
He was also known by the English as George Guess. Sequoyah was born in Taskigi, Tennessee. He was the son of a part-Cherokee
woman and Nathaniel Gist, an English trader. Sequoyah worked as a trader and a silversmith in Cherokee County, Georgia. He
served with the United States Army during the Creek War. The giant sequoia trees and Sequoia National Park in California are
named after him. Sequoyah, determined to preserve Cherokee culture began to form a system of writing for the Cherokees about
1809. By 1821 he had improve an alphabet that had over 80 characters that stood for all the syllables of the Cherokee language.
The alphabet allowed the Cherokee to publish newspapers and books in their own language. Thousands learned to read and write
in the new written language. Most historians credit Sequoyah, the most famous Cherokee, with the invention of the syllabary.
However, some oral historians contend that the written Cherokee language is much, much older. But even if there was an ancient
written Cherokee language, it was lost to the Cherokees until Sequoyah developed the syllabary. The development of the syllabary
was one of the events which was destined to have a profound influence on our tribe's history. This extraordinary achievement
marks the only known instance of an individual creating a totally new system of writing. Born in the 1770s in the Cherokee
village of Tuskegee on the Tennessee River, Sequoyah was a mixed blood whose mother, Wureth, belonged to the Paint Clan. Sometimes
the young man was known by his English name, George Gist or Guess, a legacy from his white father. Sequoyah, reared in the
old tribal ways and customs, became a hunter and fur trader. He was also a skilled silver craftsman who never learned to speak,
write or read English. However, he was always fascinated with the white people's ability to communicate with one another by
making distinctive marks on paper - what some native people referred to as "talking leaves". Handicapped from a hunting accident
and therefore having more time for contemplation and study, Sequoyah supposedly set about to devise his own system of communication
in 1809.
He devoted the next dozen years to his task, taking time to serve as a soldier in the War of 1812 and the Creek War. Despite
constant ridicule by friends and even family members, and accusations that he was insane or practicing witchcraft, Sequoyah
became obsessed with his work on the Cherokee language. "It is said that in ancient times, when writing first began, a man
named Moses made marks on a stone. I can agree with you by what name to call those marks and that will be writing and can
be understood," attributed to Sequoyah. Some historians say that ultimately Sequoyah determined the Cherokee language was
made up of particular clusters of sounds and combinations of vowels and consonants. The eighty-five characters in the syllabary
represent all the combination of vowel and consonant sounds that form our (the Cherokee) language. In 1812, Sequoyah's demonstration
of the system before a gathering of astonished tribal leaders was so dramatically convincing that it promptly led to the official
approval of the syllabary. Within several months of Sequoyah's unveiling of his invention, a substantial number of people
in the Cherokee Nation reportedly were able to read and write in their own language. Many mixed bloods were already able to
read and write in English, but the syllabary made it possible for virtually everyone in the Cherokee Nation, young and old,
to master our language in a relatively short period of time. In 1827, the Cherokee council appropriated funding for the establishment
of a national newspaper. Early the following year, the hand press and syllabary characters in type were shipped by water from
Boston and transported overland the last two hundred miles by wagon to the capital of the Cherokee Nation, New Echota. The
inaugural issue of the newspaper, "Tsa la gi Tsu lehisanunhi" or "Cherokee Phoenix", printed in parallel columns in Cherokee
and English appeared on February 21, 1828. It was the first Indian newspaper published in the United States. From: historical
accounts & records
LINK TO BRAVEHORSE WARRIORS VOLUME TWO
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