Show ew honors for yan 1 J avs ab ioa eiyo aw w atie cherottee Che roTee version home sweet home by ELMO SCOTT WATSON PEAK of a great indian and the average american usually thinks of one of those chiefs who won fame by their warlike deeds and the unsuccessful wars which they waged against the conquering white man king philip of the warn pontiac of the Ot tawas tecumseh of the shawnees black oj the sacs and foxes osee i ola of the seminoles Semi noles chief joseph of the nez perces and red cloud and sitting bull of the sioux brave as these men were and deserving of honor though they may be for being patriots who fought in defense of what they considered right there Is another a min of peace instead of war who seems destined to be remembered longer than any of the others he was sequoyah of the cherokees for it was who invented an alphabet and taught his people to write talk on paper BO that talk stayed and remembered itself and who won for himself the title of the cadmus of the cherokees ills statue stands in stat nary hall in the capitol at washington the gift of the state of oklahoma as the symbol of one of its two greatest men out on the pacific coast there Is an even greater memorial to sequoyah there great trees tower to the heavens bome of them more than feet high they are the oldest living things in the world their ages being estimated at from 2000 to years the picture above indicates the size of these giants its girth is 84 feet these trees perpetuate the memory of sequoyah for the two biedes sequoia the red wood of the timber trade and sequoia the big or mammoth tree were given their scientific names in honor of the cherokee indian how a new honor te proposed for sequoyah and his name Is to be perpetuated in the shadow of the high smoky mountains where bis people lived if a recent proposal pro to the board of geographic names of washington by the interstate nomenclature commission of north carolina and tennessee Is accepted the peak just southwest of old black standing more than feet above sea level will be known as mount sequoyah Seq noyah for a long time there has been considerable mystery about the early history of sequoyah the maker of the cherokee alphabet but a recently discovered manuscript in the collections of the library in chicago written by john howard balne the author of home sweet home has done much to clear up the mystery this valuable record was dictated to balne by major lowry a cousin of sequoyah in the presence of many cherokee chiefs and relatives in the cabin of the principal chief at a council at he nation at cechota echota in october 1835 the balne manuscript proves that sequoyah was not a full blood indian but a half breed he was the son of a white man nathaniel gist who had been a trader among the cherokees nd later was a lieutenant colonel of the indian allies who fought with washington in the french and in dlan war ills mother was a full blood chero tee woman of the paint clan at the outbreak of the revolution colonel gist seems to have deserted his indian wife and son and returned to his own people in virginia one authority sas that this took place before sequoyah Seq noyah was bom and that hla mother steamed the boy george gist after bis father he had deserted her sequoyah Is the cherokee version of that name very early he developed artistic ability ably an inheritance from some ancestor in the paternal line lie tamed his artistic ability to making articles of silver which were in much demand among the cherokee braves bracelets nose bobs forgets and chains unfortunately for him his shop became a popular loafing alae and his friends began bringing liquor to him he soon developed a taste tor the white mans firewater and was rapidly succumbing to its in fluence when he came in contact with a white man either a trader or a missionary who res cued him from his drunken habits and converted him to christianity it was by a chance conversation in 1809 that sequoyah was led to reflect upon the ability of the white man to communicate thought by means of writing the general theory with many in was that the written speech of the white man was one of the mysterious gifts of the great spirit sequoyah boldly avowed it to be merely an art and that he could himself invent a written language for the cherokees Cherok ces by a hunting accident which had crippled him he was afforded more leisure for study the prevalent idea among the cherokees Chero Lees was that the written page actually talked to the white man for this reason they called it the talking leaf sequoyah noticing the strange cabalistic marks conceived the idea that each one represented a word but upon getting a book and counting the different marks thereon he soon saw that breir number was inadequate to the expression of a language in 1809 his meditation culminated in the idea that probably each mark meant a sound to test this he scratched with his knife on a stone G calling it wa and E which he called ku this demonstrated to him the probable feasibility of his idea as by these two marks and the sounds that he applied he represented the word wa ku which Is the cherokee name of cow at the same time he scratched out three other figures to which he gave the sequent sounds of tsa aul 11 this being the cherokee for horse having thoroughly tested his discovery he next proceeded to formulate a symbol for eich syllable for this purpose he made use of a number of characters which he found in an old english spelling book picking out capitals lower case italics and figures and placing them right side up and upside down without any idea of their sound or significance having thus made use of some 35 ready made characters to which must be added a dozen or more produced by a modification of the same originals he designed from his own as many more as was necessary to his purpose making 85 in all there were three dialects of the cherokee language the eastern lower middle and west cm upper the eastern and middle dialects were about the same excepting for the change of I 1 or r and the entire absence of the labial from the eastern dialect the western differs considerably from the others in the greater frequency of the liquid 1 and the softening of the guttural g the changes tending to render it the most musical of all the cherokee dialects it Is also the standard literary dialect and the one spoken by most of those now con the cherokee nation in the west it was the only alphabet in the whole world to be finished by one man and was so corn that anyone understanding the cherokee language could upon learning the 85 characters of the alphabet read and write correctly despite some opposition the alphabet was soon recognized as an invaluable invention for the elevation of the tribe and within a few months thousands of hitherto illiterate cherokees were able to read and write their own language in 1822 sequoyah visited the west to introduce the new learning among those of his tribe v THE CHEROKEE ALPHABET below are given by number the englith equivalents of the symbol in the cherokee alphabet hown above 1 A 21 SC 40 0 sa 2 22 GO 60 VU 3 HA 23 TLE 42 HO 61 DU 4 LA 24 TSE 43 LO 62 5 MA as WE 44 MO 63 TSU 6 NA NAH 23 YE 45 NO 64 WU 7 QUA 27 I 1 46 QUO as YU 8 SAS 28 CI 47 SO 68 V 9 DA TA 29 HI 48 DO 67 10 30 U 49 68 HV 11 TSA 31 ml 50 TSO 69 LV 12 WA 32 na 51 WO 70 NV 13 YA 33 QUI ba YO 71 14 E 34 SI 53 U 72 SV 15 GE 33 54 CU 73 DV ial HE 38 y HU 74 17 LE 37 TSI 58 LU 73 alc 38 WI 57 MU 78 WV 19 NE 39 YI 58 NU 77 YV 20 QUE who ind emigrated to the arkansas it was at once taken up through the influence of Tak atoka Daga taga a great chief who had previously opposed every effort of the missionaries to introduce their own schools and religion the next year 1823 sequoyah took up his permanent home with the western land neer afterward returning to bis eastern kinsmen the first bible into the cherokee language was a portion of st john s gospel made by amsl or john arch a young convert in the fall of 1824 using the alphabet in september 1825 divald brown a prominent half breed preacher completed a translation of the new testament in the alphabet the work being handed about in manuscript as there were as yet no types cast in the sequoyah character in 1827 the cherokee council resolved to es a national paper in the cherokee lan guage and characters bipes for that purpose were cast in boston under the supervision of the noted missionary worcester of the american aboard of commissioners for foreign mis early the next bear the press and tapes arrived at new lechota and the first number of the new paper tsa lago tsu hi the cherokee phoenix printed in both languages ap pearce on february 21 1828 after a precarious existence of about six years the phoenix was suspended owing to the hostile action of the georgia authorities its successor after the removal of the cherokees to the west was the cherokee advocate of which the first number appeared at tallequah tahlequah Tahle quah I 1 T in 1844 in 1840 the cherokees all moved west and reuniting with the old settlers as the arkansas band was called the nation was reorganized and tallequah tahlequah Tahle quah was designated as the seat of government taking its name from the old cherokee town of or in tennessee in this sequoyah played a prominent part but other things were in his mind uppermost was the idea of inventing a universal indian alphabet there was an old tradition of a lost band of cherones who were believed to be somewhere in the far southwest in the hope of verifying this and restoring his lost kins men to their tribe sequoyah set out in 1843 with his son and another companion somewhere near the village of san fernando mexico their ponies were either stolen or wan dered away and the old man went out alone to find them when his companions went out to see what had become of sequoyah they found him dead ills body was wrapped up with such of his writings as he had with him and with other mementos of his greit life he had along with him as Is the gindlin custom they the body on a shelf in a small cave where nothing put could disturb it they said they marked the place so they could find it but the sent on from indian men territory to bring the boda home failed to find the place so an unmarked grae in old mexico holds the dust of one of the greatest indians who lived sequoyah the cherokee cadmus ever who gave his people a written language by Wea tern union |