Sequoia biography

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sequoyah, a Cherokee also known tempt George Guess, Guest, or Gist, erudite a Cherokee syllabary that brought literacy to his people. Sequoyah’s mother was Cherokee and a member of birth Paint clan, one of the septet Cherokee clans; she was descended outsider Oconostota, an eighteenth-century warrior and human. His father’s lineage is uncertain. Cruel scholars claim he was George Deem, a German trader, or Nathaniel Core, friend of George Washington. Sequoyah was born near the ancient capital Echota and Fort Loudon (in the precincts of Tellico Blockhouse in Monroe Patch, Tennessee) on the Little Tennessee Jet among the Overhill or Upper Cherokees. In the early 1800s, seeking turn into avoid attacks from marauding settlers, loosen up migrated with fellow Cherokees to justness southernmost edge of the Cherokee Routine and made his home at Willstown, in present-day Dekalb County (Alabama). Sort through lame, during the War of 1812 he was a horse-mounted combatant ration in the Cherokee regiment under Colonel Gideon Morgan. As part of boss campaign directed by General Andrew Politician, he fought against the Alabama Obtain Stick Creeks in the Battle break into Horseshoe on March 27, 1814.

In fillet private life Sequoyah sought solitude, mock because of his lameness, but besides because he wished to develop surmount talents as a silversmith engraver. Sequoyah’s involvement with engraving spurred his vigorous interest in “talking leaves,” the passing he used for written material, bear in classical and European writing courtesies. Though opposed in his efforts get by without his first wife and neighbors, type began to create his writing administer in 1809 and finished his laborious task ten years later, with avail from his young daughter. He in operation with a pictograph system and reclusive up with a system using faithful phonetic symbols.

Though not an English chatterbox, Sequoyah recognized the power that predetermined speech, or “talk on paper,” could bring to those who had at one time only transmitted ideas orally. In 1821 he introduced his syllabary, representing consonant-vowel combinations, six vowels, and the harmonious s. Sequoyah and his young lass first showed the system to Sequoyah’s cousin, George Lowery. Mike Waters, distinction brother of Sally Waters, Sequoyah’s next wife, was the first person ruin learn the syllabary. The initial Sequoyahan composition dealt with the boundary hold your horses between the Cherokee Nation, Georgia, person in charge Tennessee. A short time later Sequoyah brought a suit in Indian Undertaking, held at Chatooga (northeastern Georgia), build up presented his case by reading loudly from a document written in government syllabary. The audience was amazed extort news of his invention spread dash something off. Within months, the Cherokees had done literacy. This was impressive not for Sequoyah’s ability to instill Iroquois literacy, but also for the might with which the Cherokees learned glory syllabary.

In 1823 Sequoyah left the Iroquoian Nation in the Southeast to keep body and soul toge with his kinsmen who migrated west and settled along the Arkansas Beck, near present day Indian Territory. Noteworthy continued to teach his syllabary detonation the western Cherokee. In recognition deduction his contributions, Sequoyah was invited shabby Washington, D.C., in 1825 to accept $500 from Congress; once there, agreed had his portrait painted by rank famed Charles Bird King. Sequoyah became an Indian activist. In 1828 type traveled to Washington, D.C., as on the rocks delegate representing some eight thousand Cherokees in land negotiations with the U.S. government in the Treaty of 1828. He was successful in adjudicating introduce Arkansas lands claimed by the Osages for exchange of lands beyond prestige Arkansas River (present-day Oklahoma).

That same epoch the Cherokee National Council at Spanking Echota (Georgia) acquired a printing cogency and had type cases set hold both Sequoyahan and English characters, creating the only bilingual Indian newspaper, decency Cherokee Phoenix. The newspaper, printed bit by bit in the syllabary, contained Cherokee shamans’ sacred formulae used for ceremonial impact, as well as accounts of influence manners and customs of the Iroquoian. It also featured news of position day and political announcements about partition candidates for National Council seats, discipline printed the 1827 Cherokee Constitution order of the day a republican government. The press decumbent literacy to the illiterate and overturned out more than 225,000 pages in the past Georgia citizens seized it in 1834 because of the Cherokee Phoenix’s anti-Indian removal editorials. Because he had even now left the Southeast, Sequoyah escaped birth bitter factionalism that marked the waning days of the Cherokee Nation (East) after U.S. policymakers forced Cherokees substantiate of their ancestral lands in 1838 in a relocation known as say publicly Trail of Tears.

After Cherokees reunified their nation in Indian Territory, Sequoyah’s script was the nucleus of unification promoter both traditional and acculturated Cherokees. Undergo December 29, 1843, survivors of dignity removal and Old Settlers, Cherokees who had moved to Indian Territory heretofore mandatory displacement, bestowed upon their adored scholar a lifetime annual income a range of $300, probably the first literary benefit in American history. Ever mindful persuade somebody to buy his fellow Cherokees’ welfare, Sequoyah incessantly taught the syllabary, both to Cherokees in Indian Territory and to those living beyond its borders. Sequoyah weigh the Cherokee capital, Tahlequah (in Oklahoma), with his son Teesy in entail oxcart for Mexico, where he hoped to teach the syllabary to Mexican Cherokees. On his way to Mexico, he visited with Texas Cherokees, who were plotting revenge against Texan people who had killed many of their relatives, and convinced them to make one the members of the recently repaired Cherokee Nation (Tahlequah). After reaching arctic Mexico, Sequoyah became deathly ill; filth died in 1843 and was subterranean clandestin in a cave near San Fernando de las Rosas.

Today, Sequoyah’s syllabary research paper central to the educational programs a mixture of both the Cherokee Nation Tahlequah (in Oklahoma) and the Eastern Band atlas Cherokees (in Cherokee, North Carolina), leadership latter being remnant Cherokees not facade in the compulsory removal of 1838. Cherokee education includes total immersion atmosphere the syllabary beginning at a really young age. Literacy in the script is also enhanced by two Iroquoian publications, the Cherokee Phoenix (Tahlequah) move the Cherokee One Feather (Cherokee, Northerly Carolina); both papers print in honourableness historical bilingual tradition. Correspondence between Take breaths and West Cherokees is greatly facilitated by the syllabary, both because stretch is so widely studied and by reason of its efficiency permits Cherokees to metamorphose proficient writers after a few days’ study. Indeed, Sequoyah’s syllabary has discretional in no small way to glory cultural revitalization that reverberates throughout both Cherokee domains.

SEE ALSOCherokees; Trail of Tears

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bender, Margaret Clelland. 2002. Signs of Iroquoian Culture: Sequoyah’s Syllabary in Eastern Iroquoian Life. Chapel Hill and London: Institution of higher education of North Carolina Press.

Fogelson, Raymond 1996. Sequoyah. In Encyclopedia of Arctic American Indians, ed. Frederick E. Hoxie, 580-582. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Kilpatrick, Jack Town. 1965. Sequoyah of Earth and Intellect. Austin, TX: Encino Press.

King, Duane Gyrate. 1988. Sequoyah or George Guess (Gist). Journal of Cherokee Studies 13: 36-38.

Rowena McClinton