Sequoyah
He was born among the ruins of Fort Loudoun in present day Monroe
County, Tenn. around the year 1760. The Cherokee infant was
the son of a white trader named Nathaniel Gist. His mother was
of a good Cherokee family and his uncle a chief in the tribal
capitol of Echota. The boy was given the Cherokee name of Sikwa’yi
or Sequoyah. In translation, it means "Pig-foot" and
pointed to the fact that he was born with the congenital deformity
"clubfoot"- a condition where the front part of the
foot is twisted out of position. In that era of history, his
name may have been a constant reminder of a disability, but
it was one easily overcome by the determined Cherokee and a
name that would forever be remembered in the annals of human
history.
As a child, Sequoyah grew up in the Cherokee town of Tuskegee
with his mother, who chose to raise the child on her own. He
grew up in league with others his own age in spite of the deformity
and learned the arts of hunting and fishing. The earliest mention
of his childhood is at Echota where he attended at the visit
of the Iroquois peace delegation in 1770.
For the most part, Sequoyah grew up in an era of constant conflict
and turmoil. From the numerous intertribal conflicts with the
Creeks, the American Revolution, and disputes with settlers
moving into the region, Sequoyah adapted and learned. Although
he assumed the name George Gist later in life in recognition
of his father, no record shows he ever met or visited with the
man. Sequoyah was a talented man with a gifted mind for mechanical
things and learned the delicate craft of silversmithing. Like
most Cherokee of the day, he also relied on hunting and fur
trading to supplement his income.
By the time Sequoyah was approaching middle age, the first Christian
mission was built near the tribe and offered to give the Cherokee
a basic English education so they could learn to deal with the
new culture that was occupying the Tennessee region.
Sequoyah never attended their schools and never learned to read,
speak, or write the English language. In fact, he didn’t
have much to do with the Christian missionaries at all and continued
to practice his native religion. On occasion, he had visited
with the Moravian Missions, however, and came away with friendly
feelings towards the people, but it was not his way and Sequoyah
maintained his traditionalist’s values.
Throughout his life, however, he had come to envy the settler’s
way of communicating through writing. When he was given a gift
of a set of silver spurs with his name engraved on them, Sequoyah
would trace the letters with his fingers and roll them in his
hands for hours on end. The "talking leaves" of the
white man intrigued him and, by a chance discussion in 1809,
Sequoyah began to work on a syllabus for his own people.
Sequoyah was always described as being of a serious and contemplative
nature and capable of pondering on an idea forever. He worked
diligently on wood tablets trying to devise symbols that would
work.
In 1813, he left his home and entered the Cherokee Militia in
Turkeytown to help in the War of 1812. When his term was up
three months later, he reenlisted and marched with General Jackson
to fight the "Red Stick" Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe
Bend where he served with distinction.
Following his return home, Sequoyah was seriously injured in
a hunting accident that left him crippled for life. The injury
gave him extra time on his hands and allowed Sequoyah to study
his progress on the project. With a fresh outlook, the Tennessean
soon turned back to working on a syllabus for his people.
It wasn’t an easy task for Sequoyah and often led to him
being scorned or ridiculed by his wife and community. They thought
he should be out making a living for his family rather than
playing with the wood tablets and drawing characters. Sequoyah
would fill a tablet with characters and, when one was filled,
store them in a little shed near his shop to look over again
and compare his work. His single-minded dedication and devotion
to the project was lost on his friends and those around him.
Being the subject of the community’s gossip finally turned
out to be too much for his wife’s vanity.
While Sequoyah was gone from home one day, she decided to set
his shed on fire and burned it to the ground with all of his
experimental tablets in it. The reason being that, with the
shed and tablets destroyed, Sequoyah would return to being a
"normal" Cherokee and participate in the traditional
activities of his tribe.
Sequoyah was devastated, but he had faced setbacks before and
quickly knew how to recover from it. He divorced his wife and
moved away to another Cherokee community in Alabama where he
could continue his work without interruption. Sequoyah’s
persistence began to start paying off for him and he started
seeing the syllabus coming together.
After years of patient work, repeated failures, setbacks, and
ridicule, the illiterate Cherokee silversmith finally evolved
a written language for his people. It was 85 characters long
and reproduced every sound made in the Cherokee language. With
it, he could completely record the words of his people into
a written form. The Tennessean now had to prove it would work
under any circumstance or condition. He began teaching it to
his beloved daughter Ayoka, who was a willing student and quickly
began to learn the newly created syllabus.
In 1821, Sequoyah went before a tribal council of leading officials
to prove his writing system would work. He and Ayoka wrote back
and forth to one another at the demonstration. They also recorded
the conversations of those present and showed how remarkably
easy it was to teach others
how to do so. The syllabus was quickly recognized as an invaluable
tool for the elevation of the tribe and had a liberating effect
on the Cherokee. They built no schoolhouses, but turned every
home and building in the Cherokee Nation into a learning academy.
In the course of only a few months and without money or finances
of any kind, thousands of Cherokee were able to read and write
in their own language. The realization of Sequoyah’s syllabus
was unbelievable. Plans were made to build a Cherokee national
press, libraries, and museums at New Echota.
Even though the Christian missionaries were opposed to the new
language because it was of "Indian origin", they were
forced to see the advantages of a literate Cherokee Nation.
Sequoyah never stood still. He traveled west to Arkansas where
he began teaching the syllabus to the tribes who were migrating
away from their ancestral homeland. In 1823, the Cherokee National
Council under the leadership of Chief John Ross made a public
acknowledgment of Sequoyah’s accomplishment and struck
a silver medal with a commemorative inscription in both English
and Cherokee on both of its sides. The Tennessee Cherokee, who
had faced ridicule, distrust, and numerous failures in his life,
was suddenly regarded as one of the tribe’s leading men.
In the fall of 1824, a young convert named John Arch translated
a portion of the Gospel of Saint John into Cherokee. It was
the first time the tribe could read the Bible in their own language
and it was translated hundreds of times and spread throughout
the nation.
A year later, noted mixed-blood preacher David Brown completed
a translation of the New Testament into Cherokee and forwarded
it to Thomas McKenney at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington,
D.C. It was the first time the Cherokee syllabus was submitted
to American officials. Sequoyah’s name and his written
language spread like wildfire throughout North America.
In 1827, the Cherokee Nation convened a meeting a delegates
to create a national constitution providing themselves legal
sovereignty as a nation. In addition, they established a national
newspaper for the Cherokee. The printing types of the characters
were special ordered and created in Boston, Mass. and it took
a year to get them made and in the hands of the Cherokee at
New Echota. The printing paper had been overlooked and had to
be sent from Knoxville to the Cherokee Capitol. On Feb. 28,
1828, Issac Harris and John Wheeler with half-blood apprentice
John Candy issued the first edition of the Tsa’ lagi Tsu
lehisanun’ hi, or "The Cherokee Phoenix". Elias
Boudinot (Galagi’na) was the editor of the paper.
The newspaper offices were located in a log house and, while
the white printers could not understand Cherokee, they set the
pages up as they were handed to them.
In 1828, Sequoyah also attended Washington, D.C. as a delegate
from the Arkansas tribe and was received as a hero in the nation’s
capitol. The treaty made on that occasion with the government
contained a provision for the payment to Sequoyah of $500 given
to him "for the great benefits he has conferred on the
Cherokee people, in the beneficial results which they are now
experiencing from the use of the alphabet discovered by him".
Sequoyah continued to teach the language to every tribal faction
or Cherokee he met. He felt it was his mission in life and it
was a cause that he feverishly fought for in every corner of
the Cherokee Nation. Following a Mexican proclamation that promised
the Cherokee who emigrated to the country land in exchange for
conversion to Catholicism and loyalty to the nation, Sequoyah
learned that a tribe of his people, who did not know the language
had crossed over into Mexico to live.
He traveled to find them and instruct the tribe in the Cherokee
syllabus. On his way to the tribe in 1843, the Tennessean died
and was buried near present day Monterrey, Mexico.
The illiterate Cherokee who revolutionized his people and his
nation with an 85-character syllabus did not pass into the night
unheralded or unknown. What he did in his short life was something
that took entire civilizations thousands of years to accomplish.
Sequoyah is still the only human in history recognized for both
creating an alphabet and a written language. The accomplishment
was not lost on European nations and those educated few who
understood the significance of Sequoyah’s work.
All was not easy for the Tennessee native. In many intellectual
circles, a controversy raged over Sequoyah’s achievement.
The use of the word "discovered" instead of "created"
in the Arkansas treaty honoring him was grounds enough for many
ethnologists to say the Sequoyah did not create the written
Cherokee language, but rather found one that was lost. The intellects
of the 19th century tried vainly to prove their theories, but
were disappointed or disproved every time.
The word Sequoyah went on to become a part of the American vocabulary.
In honor of him, the giant conifera trees in California were
named in honor of Sequoyah and so was the 604-square-mile National
Park that now protects the ancient trees. The spelling of his
name is corrupted and often spelled as "Sequoia" or
"Sequoya".
In Tennessee, the world-renown Cherokee scholar has a high school
named after him in his native Monroe County and the region where
he was born and raised also has a museum dedicated to his life
and those of the Cherokee community where he grew up.
The Sequoyah Birthplace Museum is the only Indian-operated historical
site in the State of Tennessee and is managed by the Eastern
Band of the Cherokee Nation.
The museum is located on Citico Road in Vonore on the shores
of Tellico Lake a half mile from the Fort Loudoun State Historical
Park. The facility is open year round on Monday to Saturday
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday noon to 5 p.m. It is closed on Thanksgiving
and Christmas Day.
ooooooooo
For years, Cherokee experts have looked for the grave of Sequoyah,
but to this day it has never been found. When he died, he was
immediately buried and the gravesite never marked.
Special thanks for this story has to go to Sequoyah Birthplace
Museum Director Russ Townsend, who took time to run down some
of the facts surrounding Sequoyah’s life for this article.
There are a lot of myths and legends surrounding the Cherokee
silversmith and very few books available. The museum does stock
them, however, and they are available for purchase. One of the
best starter reference books available on the tribe is "The
Myths and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee" by James Mooney.
It was first written around the turn of the 20th century, but
has been republished on numerous occasions and is still available.
The Sequoyah Birthplace Museum also oversees the archaeological
remains of the Cherokee ancient capitol of Echota and can direct
you to the sites. The council house was discovered in the 1970’s
and the foundations of the seven pillars found representing
the Seven clans of the Cherokee. The site is still used as a
sacred ceremonial site by the Cherokee. In addition, the museum
grounds feature a shrine that contains the remains of over 800
Cherokee exhumed from the land around the Little Tennessee Valley
prior to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s flooding of the
river into Tellico Lake.
The Sequoyah Birthplace Museum will be hosting its annual Sequoyah
Festival and Pow-Wow on September 12 and 13. The annual event
is one of their biggest attractions and brings people from all
across America to the ancient sites of the Cherokee. It is the
same weekend as the "Fort Loudoun 18th Century Trade Faire"
and a shuttle bus will be available between the two events.
Driver Pheasant, William Crowe, and officials from the Eastern
Band of the Cherokees will be among the special guests at the
event. Everyone is invited to attend. For more information on
the museum’s hours and the 1998 Sequoyah Festival and Pow-Wow,
you can call (423) 884-6469.
The intellectual prejudice against Sequoyah continued for many
years following his death. In fact, it was one of the principal
reasons Smithsonian archaeologist John Emmert was digging around
the Bat Creek section of the Little Tennessee Valley when he
uncovered the controversial "Bat Creek Stone" bearing
what many believe today to be a paleo-Hebraic inscription. At
first, it was thought to be a remnant of an ancient Cherokee
writing system. In fact, Smithsonian Director Cyrus Thomas’
final report on the mound survey excavations labeled the artifact’s
inscription as "beyond question, letters from an ancient
Cherokee alphabet said to have been invented by George Guess.
(sic) A half-breed Cherokee about 1821."
The Cherokee were undaunted by the controversy and Sequoyah’s
language is still used in both the Eastern and Western Bands,
but has seen its popularity decline over the years. In the late
19th and early 20th century, its use was discouraged by the
white teachers in Cherokee schools, who would wash Cherokee
children’s’ mouths out with soap if they ever heard
them speaking the "Indian language" in class. The
method of punishment had an impact on efforts to preserve the
language.
The Cherokee are today the most populous tribe in North America
and their language is at the top of the preservation list among
Cherokee scholars. There has been a revival of late to keep
the Cherokee language alive through publication of books and
audiotapes. While there is a regional difference between the
Eastern and Western dialects, both are working to continue teaching
those of Cherokee ancestry the Cherokee syllabus created by
Sequoyah. An Eastern Band Language course is expected to be
released soon.
The traditional story-telling means of historic preservation
still exist among the Cherokee and, like most Native American
tribes, is still a principal means of relating events from the
past.
The sudden transformation of the Cherokee Nation into a literate
society did have its drawbacks. It intimidated the Georgia State
government, who almost immediately declared the Cherokee noncitizens
and began the motions to have them removed. Both of the white
printers of the Cherokee Phoenix were jailed and open season
practically declared on the Cherokee Nation. Even though the
U.S. Supreme Court ruled later the Cherokee were a legal nation
with the rights and privileges of one, President Andrew Jackson
opted to remove the tribe to Oklahoma during their greatest
period of advancement. While their dreams of museums, presses,
and libraries did not come true in Georgia, the Cherokee Reservation
in North Carolina and the Western Band in Oklahoma saw to their
construction following the removal and today are among the best
institutions on Native American culture.
Sequoyah’s accomplishment also changed the way scientists
and sociologists would come to think about the evolution of
cultures. It disproved the accepted theories that advancement
and technology evolve forward at a predictable pace and showed
evidence that it could easily burst forward without the devastating
results that are often imagined. In short, it was an achievement
that both changed the world and how we think about the human
condition to this day.
