Sequoyah

When the Early Europeans first landed in America, they discovered a Native American race of warriors called the Tsalagi people. These people were living in what is not known as eastern Tennessee and North and South Carolina. Back then, the white men called them “Cherokee.” Emerging from that tribe was a man named Sequoyah, who was born sometime in the 1770’s in a Tsalagi village called Tuskegee. This village is located in present day Tennessee. Sequoyah’s mother was a member of the Paint Clan called Wurerth, while the father is often argued about. Most historians agree that Sequoyah’s father was Nathaniel Gist, a white man from Virginia. Sequoyah is often referred to as George Gist, but some still believe that he is of pure blood. Sequoyah was raised by the traditions of the Tsalagi people, and followed their customs. He was injured in a hunting accident as a young man, becoming handicapped. In 1809, Sequoyah noticed how the European men had much better methods of recording than their oral traditions. To solve this problem, he decided to create the first Tsalagi alphabet. During his service in the War of 1812, Sequoyah realized that the warriors could not send or receive letters from loved ones and orders had to be memorized, all the more reason to start and alphabet. First, Sequoyah began by making the alphabet as symbols, such as Chinese characters. He soon came to the realization that there would have to be far too many symbols for this to work. Sequoyah had to deal with constant harassment from those in the tribe who did not believe in his work. After discovering that a system of symbols would be inefficient, Sequoyah tried a different approach; a phonetic alphabet in which symbols represented sounds instead of things or concepts. In the Tsalagi language, there were 85 vowel and consonant sounds, which were assigned characters (letters). Sequoyah presented his alphabet before Tsalagi leaders in 1821, and they all accepted it. It was the first official written language of the Tsalagi tribe.