Sequoyah and the Cherokee Language

One of the interesting things we have learned about in this region is the importance of the Cherokee Civilization and one of the most interesting things about the Cherokee is that they had a written language by the early 1800’s; more on that in a bit. In the late 18th century the Cherokee had many serious conflicts with white settlers who, the Cherokee felt, were encroaching on their tribal hunting lands. By around 1795 those conflicts had mostly ended and the pressures of the flood of white settlers dictated changes in the tribe’s political organization. After the cessation of hostilities with the whites the Cherokees experienced rapid acculturation and prosperity.

By the 1820’s the Cherokee had created a form of government that sounds eerily familiar. They elected a principal chief as well as a deputy chief and established a two house legislature as well as judicial districts; each district had a judge and a sheriff. They also had established a supreme court, and a constitutional government.

You may recall that in 1838 the Cherokee Nation was removed from their homeland in Tennessee and resettled in Oklahoma with the forced march now know as the “Trail of Tears”. Not knowing much about this resettlement we were interested when we found out that the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum was right across the Little Tennessee River from our marina near Vonore, TN. Our visit there provided a fascinating look at Cherokee culture, language development, and some information on the resettlement.

Around 1776 an Indian woman named Wurteh, of a family that was of high rank in the Nation, gave birth to a son whose father was a white trader named Nathanial Gist. In the Cherokee tradition the lineage passes through the Mother’s clan however the boy was given the name of George Gist. It was not uncommon for Cherokee men of that era to be given a white name and an Indian name; this baby was also called Sequoyah. Abandoned by his father shortly after birth he was raised by his prosperous Mother and developed skills in managing her dairy and horse herds. As a young man he fought for the United States in the War of 1812. During his adult life he often made a living as a silversmith.

Sequoyah was intrigued by the “talking leaves” of the whites and thought that there were advantages in being able to retain thoughts on paper. Shortly after the end of the War of 1812 he was married and around this time he set about creating a writing system for the Cherokee language. Not being a learned man he was overwhelmed and frustrated with the complexity of the work. At some point his wife and neighbors (apparently feeling that his efforts may make them look foolish) destroyed his books and papers representing several years work. Sequoyah persevered and in 1821 he completed the Cherokee syllabary; within a year thousands of Cherokees became literate. In 1827 the tribe purchased a printing press and in February of 1828 the first Cherokee language newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, was printed. This newspaper was printed weekly until the press was confiscated by the State of Georgia in 1834 because of anti-removal editorials.

In 1847, three years after Sequoyah’s death, the Austrian Stephen Endlich conferred the name Sequoyah on the majestic California redwoods. In an ironic touch the State of Georgia erected a memorial to him in 1927 it is located in Calhoun, not far from the print shop that produced tens of thousand of pages of literature in Cherokee before Georgia confiscated the press. In 1917 the State of Oklahoma placed a statue of Sequoyah in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. Quite a memorial to a man who believed in the power of the written word!