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Sequoyah, Inventor of the Cherokee Alphabet

© Karen West Sanchez

When Europeans first landed in North America, they found an industrious race of warrior people called Tsalagi living in what is now eastern Tennessee and the Carolinas. The whites called them "Cherokee." From this nation would come a man whose extraordinary abilities would greatly serve and protect his people. His name was Sequoyah.

Few questioned the abilities of Native Americans as warriors. The Tsalagi were one of the foremost warrior nations. But some questioned the intelligence of the Native Americans. Were they truly capable of high intellectual attainment or were they merely savages? Among others, Sequoyah would put this racist silliness to rest.

Most agree that Sequoyah was born sometime in the 1770's in the Tsalagi village of Tuskeegee on the Tennessee. His mother, Wurerth, belonged to the Paint Clan. Some argue that Sequoyah's father was a white man from Virginia named Nathaniel Gist (sometimes rendered "Guess"). Sequoyah is sometimes referred to as George Guess or George Gist. Others insist that Sequoyah was a full-blood; that he let himself be portrayed as a half-blood to give more credence to his alphabet.

In any event, young Sequoyah was raised in the customs and traditions of the Tsalagi people. As a young man, Sequoyah was injured in a hunting accident and became partially lame. Perhaps this made him more introspective. Sequoyah understood that much of the power white men wielded at the expense of Native Americans came from their ability to read and write. This stored information was far more efficient than oral tradition and story-telling. In about 1809, he began to plan his alphabet of the Tsalagi language. Even so, Sequoyah was no intellectual man. He took part in the War of 1812 as a warrior in spite of his physical handicap. During that service, Sequoyah became more than ever convinced that the Tsalagi needed writing. Unlike whites, Tsalagi warriors could not write letters home or receive mail from loved ones. Orders had to be committed to memory. Sequoyah began to concentrate more and more on his "talking leaves".

At first, Sequoyah conceived of a pictographic language (similar to Chinese) where words or concepts are symbolized with graphics. He quickly realized that such a system would require an unmanageable number of symbols. All the while he worked, Sequoyah was harassed by those who did not approve of his work or appreciate what it would mean to the Tsalagi people. Sequoyah then began to experiment with a phonetic alphabet where symbols represented individual sounds rather than concepts or things. This was much more manageable. He set to work and discovered that there are 85 vowel and consonant sounds in the Tsalagi language. Sequoyah assigned a character to each of these. This was the core of the Tsalagi or Cherokee alphabet.

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