Cherokee Alphabet

This is a story about a poor, handicapped, uneducated and ridiculed half-breed Indian who triumphed over insurmountable odds to bring a gift to his people that was so great that it is unrivaled in all human history. 

Sequoyah was born sometime between 1760 and 1776 in Overhills country near the Cherokee village of Tushkeegee on the Tennessee River near old Fort Loudoun in Tennessee.   

His mother, Wu-teh, was a member of the Paint Clan and his father, Nathanial Gist (Guess or Guest) was an English fur trader.   

Sequoyah was raised in the old ways of the Cherokee and became a trapper and fur trader.

He was given the name George Gist by his father. 

As a result of an early hunting accident, he was given the name Sequoyah which means "pig's foot" in Cherokee. 

After being permanently disabled, he developed a talent for craftsmanship, making silver ornaments and blacksmithing. 

His handicap became the source of both ridicule and a blessing in his life.   

Sequoyah never learned to read or write English.

He became captivated by the white man's  "talking leaves" and began work on developing a Cherokee writing system in 1809.  

He endured constant ridicule by friends and even family members, who said he was insane or practicing witchcraft. 

After  twelve years of labor, ridicule and abuse he finally reduced the complex language into 86 symbols, each representing a unique sound of Cherokee speech. 

In 1821, after a demonstration of the system to amazed tribal elders, the Cherokee Nation adopted his alphabet, now called a 'syllabary'. 

Thousands of Cherokees learned to read and write within a few years. 

This extraordinary achievement marks the only known instance of an individual creating a totally new system of writing.  

In 1824 the Cherokee National Council at New Echota, Georgia, honored him with a silver medal, which he proudly wore for the rest of his life, and later with an annuity of $300, which his widow continued to receive after his death.

By 1825, the Bible and numerous religious hymns and pamphlets, educational materials and legal documents and books of every description were translated into the Cherokee language. 

In 1827, the Cherokee council appropriated funding for the establishment of a national newspaper

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. 

Ancient lore asserts there was a written Cherokee language thousands of years ago. 

According to legend, the primeval Cherokee written language was lost as the tribe migrated across the continent and their numbers dwindled according to living conditions and influences of more numerous neighbors.

Cherokee comprises the southern branch of the Iroquoian language family.

The northern branch Onodaga, Oneida, Seneca-Cayuga, and Mohawk.

The linguistic split occurred about 3000 years ago, when the Cherokee migrated south from the Great Lakes region in east central North America to what is now Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina.

In the 1800's, historian Mooney found three dialects of the language as his studied the Cherokee culture.

The middle dialect, Kituwah, is the only one spoken by the Cherokee today. 

The Cherokee language split into two main dialects after the Cherokee began voluntary migration west to Arkansas prior to theRevolutionary War and continuing up to the Removals (Trail of Tears) in 1838-1839.   

A small number of Cherokee hid in the mountains of North Carolina and later became the Eastern Band of Cherokee. 

Today, the United Keetoowah (Kituwah) Band of Cherokees in Oklahoma comprise the largest concentration of traditional-speaking western-dialect Cherokees.

Today, Cherokee is the second most widely used Native American language, spoken by an estimated 20,000 Cherokee in northeastern Oklahoma and another 5,000 near the Qualla Reservation in North Carolina.

One of the few American Indian languages to be growing is Cherokee.