| Show N New ew ho Honors for S 14 AV 14 U oya h e C 11 e 4 4 k e ID IL D 14 11 27 T ftc 51 as P 0 11 sty r aa mil A 5 F if 1 29 0 aai 42 11 W 17 55 yr p ar e 30 f P il 41 6 5 am 69 K lad q a 51 H U 44 iia 60 t G C 4 az jk 45 57 y 0 ax M 30 20 0 33 V wa 1 74 0 P 1 U at au U 4 71 1 47 a 9 91 t W 22 t 35 4 1 S Z 61 S 8 0 a C I 1 23 L 73 it C ai its t 19 9 ir 0 ILG 71 h P 34 21 y v ir 50 SOK K 63 J 2513 tw 3 90 ap lat Q ato 76 59 9 52 fi 77 B the ila wa axa L zau TUM edw sweet some ZA 17 A malva Mf lva JT bufi ZA Z SU duyao yao oh DIU RU knoy 2 M tr 2 dh am ar bycz taA Jj bu IL na 4 VW ofru Ier lK J biase ia sa I 1 av a fuwa ati gears W tr aaa KI zak T atie e cherokee version of H home e 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 ottaway Ott Ot tawas awaa tecumseh of the shawnees black hawk of the sacs and foxes osceola of the Semi seminoles 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 b ba for being patriots who fought in defense of what they considered right there Is another a man of peace instead of war wi ajio 1 I 0 seems destined to be remembered longer than any of the others lie ile was sequoyah of the cherokees Chern kees for it was sequoyah who invented indented an alphabet and taught his people to write talk on paper a so that talk stayed and remembered itself and who won for hi himself m self the title of the cadmus of th the e ch cherokees erolee s ills statue stands in statuary 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 coast there Is an even greater memorial to se there great trees tower to the heavens some of them more than feet high they are the oldest living things in the world their ages being estimated at from 2000 to 1000 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 species sequoia the red wood of the timber trade and sequoia gig gigantic antia the big or mammoth tree were given their scientific names in honor of the cherokee indian now a new honor Is proposed for sequoyah and his name Is to be perpetuated in the shadow of the high smoky mountains where his people lived if a recent proposal to the board of geographic names of washington by the interstate nomenclature commission of north carolina and nd tennessee Is accepted the eak just s southwest of old black standing more than feet above sea level will be known as mount sequoyah 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 newberry library in chicago written by john howard paine the author of Il home lome sweet home blome has done much to clear up the mystery tills this valuable record was kas dictated to paine 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 of the nation at echota cechota in october 1835 the paine manuscript proves that sequoyah was not a full blood indian but a half breed lie he was the son of a white man nathaniel gist alst who had been a trader among the cherokees and later was a lieutenant colonel of the indian allies who fought with washington in the french and indian war ills mother was a full blood cherokee woman of the point paint clan at the outbreak of the revolution colonel gist cist seems to have deger deserted ted his indian wife and son and returned to ills his own people in virginia one authority says that this took rook place before sequoyah was born and that his mother named the boy george gist after his father k Y in a tu I 1 ral tre at ar H al ia the states appi though he had deserted her sequoyah Is the cherokee version of that name very early he developed artistic ability probably an inheritance from some ancestor in the paternal line lie he turned his big artistic ability to making articles of silver which were to in much demand e m and among the cherokee braves bracelets n nose 0 se bobs forgets and chains unfortunately for him his shop became a popular loafing alark 91 and his friends began bringing liquor to him he soon developed a taste for the white mans firewater and was rapidly succumbing to its influence when he came in contact with a white man either a trader or a missionary who rescued him from his drunken habits and converted him to christianity it was by a chance conversation in 1800 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 indians 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 lan language for the cherokees by a hunting accident which had crippled him he was afforded more leisure for study the prevalent idea among the cherokees was that the written page actually talked to the white man for this reason they called it the talking lent 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 their number was inadequate to the expression of a language in 1800 his meditation culminated in the idea that probably each mark meant a sound to test this lie he scratched with his knife on a stone 0 calling it wa and 13 which he called ku this demonstrated to him the probable feasibility of its 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 qui 11 this being the cherokee for borse having thoroughly tested his discovery he next proceeded to formulate a symbol for each 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 lie he designed from his own imagination as many more Rs as was necessary to his purpose making 85 in all there were three dialects of the cherokee language the eastern lower middle and western 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 particularly in the greater frequency of the liquid I 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 constituting sti the cherokee nation in the west it was the only alphabet in the whole world to be finished by one man and was so complete that anyone understanding the cherokee language could upon learning the 83 characters of the alphabet read and write correctly despite some opposition the alphabet was soon recognized as an invaluable invention indention jor for the elevation of the tribe awl within a few months thousands of hitherto illiterate cherokees were able to read and write their own language in 1822 sequoyah sequel n h visited the west to introduce the new learning among those of his tribe THE CHEROKEE ALPHABET belo below w are given by number the E englith glish equivalent qui of the yr abol in the cherokee alphabet shown ia 1 A 21 SE 40 0 59 aca and KA 22 DE W TE 41 GO so 60 VU U aha 3 HA 23 TLE 42 HO st 61 DU 4 LA 24 TSE 43 LO 62 ama B MA 28 29 WE 44 MO 63 TSU 6 NA NAH 28 26 YE 45 NO 64 WU 7 QUA 27 1 I 46 QUO 63 YU k 8 SA SAS S 28 GI 47 SO 68 V B DA TA 29 HI 48 DO 67 CV I 1 10 0 DLA go 30 LI 49 68 63 HV 1 11 TSA 31 ml MI 51 50 TSO 60 LV 12 WA 32 NI 51 WO 70 NV 13 YA 33 QUI 52 YO 71 14 E 34 SI 53 U 72 SV 15 GE CE 35 DI d TI 54 OU GU 73 DV ial HE S 36 38 ss HU 74 17 LE 37 TSI 68 56 LU 75 Ts V ll 11 38 39 WI 57 51 MU 76 WV 19 NE 39 YI 58 NU 77 YV 2 20 0 QUE who had emigrated to the arkansas it was at once taken up through the influence of Tak atoka da gabaga a great chief who had previously opposed every effort of the missionaries to introduce their own schools and religion abe next year 1823 sequoyah took permanent home with the western land never afterward returning to his big eastern kinsmen the first bible translation into the cherokee lan language was a portion of st johns gospel made by aasi or john arch a young natt native v 0 convert in the fall of 1824 using the alphabet in september 1825 david brown a prominent halfbreed half breed preacher completed a translation of the new testament in the alphabet the work being handed about in manuscript as aa there were as yet no types cast in the sequoyah character in 1827 the cherokee council resolved to establish a national paper in the cherokee language and characters types for that purpose were cast in boston under the supervision of the noted missionary worcester of the american can board of commissioners tor for foreign missions early the next yeartie year the press and types type S arrived at new echota cechota and the first number of the new paper tsa lago the cherokee phoenix printed in both languages appeared 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 tahlequah tallequah Tahle quah I 1 T in 1814 1844 in 1840 die cherokees all moved west and reuniting with the old settlers as aa the arkansas band was called the nation was reorganized and tahlequah tallequah Tahle quah was designated as the seat of government taking its name from the old cherokee town of Tall kwa or Tel bellico tellico lico in tennessee in this reorganization 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 cherokees who were believed to be somewhere in the far Sout southwest hyest in the hope of verifying this tradition and restoring ills hla lost kinsmen in en to their tribe sequoyah SPI apt out in 1843 with his son and another companion somewhere near the village of san fernando Fer nindo mexico their ponies were either stolen or wandered 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 film dead ills body was wrapped up with such of his writings as he had with him and with other mementos of his great life he had along with him as Is the indian cust custom ve m they put the body on a shelf in a small cu cave where nothing could disturb it they said they marked the place so they could fled find it but the men sent on from indian territory to bring if the body home failed to find the place so an unmarked grave in old mexico holds the dust of one of the greatest indians who ever lived sequoyah the Chero cherokee keo cadmus w who ho 9 gave ave ills his people a written language by western newspaper Naw paper union |
