SE-QUO-YAH – a lithograph from
Indian Tribes, McKinney and Hall, 1856
Sequoyah (ᏍᏏᏆᏱ), also known as George Guess or Gist, (1760 - 1843), was the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary.
Sequoyah is said to have been born to a Virginian fur trader and the daughter of a Cherokee chief in the village of Tuskegee, Tennessee. He and his mother were abandoned by the father.
Early in life he worked as a silversmith, and also served with the Cherokee regiment against the "Red Sticks" in the Creek War (1813-14). He never learned either how to speak English nor how to write anything more than his own name, but did recognize and appreciate the influence and usefulness of the written word. Around 1809, he began work on the development of a writing system, and 12 years later produced the finished results.
The script is a syllabary composed of 85 unique glyphs, each representing a distinct phonetic component of the Cherokee language. The illustration on the right shows the Sequoyah syllabary, and alongside each character the form ultimately used. Of the characters finally used, only a few actually retain the original shape, or derivatives thereof. Those sharing Latinate forms may or may not have been suggested by the Rev. Samuel Worcester, who helped Sequoyah to improve and finally adapt the script for use as foundry type. This adapted script was (probably) first cast into type by Baker & Greele of Boston in c.1829
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Last updated: 10-21-2005 21:56:52
