posted 01-12-2012 04:44 PM            

George Gist (Sequoyah), inventor of the Cherokee syliabury, soldier, silversmith, diplomat, born in Taskigi Town (now Monroe Co., TN) around 1775 and died in San Fernando, Mexico in 1843.

He moved to Georgia, where he acquired skills working with silver. Where a man who purchased one of his works suggested that he sign his work, like the white silversmiths had begun to do. Sequoyah considered the idea and since he did not know how to write he visited Charles Hicks, a wealthy farmer in the area who wrote English. Hicks showed Sequoyah how to spell his name, writing the letters on a piece of paper. Sequoyah began to toy with the idea of a Cherokee writing system that year(1809). After many attempts he perfected the Cherokee alphabet in 1821

posted 01-12-2012 09:11 PM            

~Cheryl

From a British magazine, The Visitor, 1837 (prior to his disappearance and presumed death in 1843):

From Noble Lives of a Noble Race, 1909:

From The Chickasaw Nation, 1922:

posted 08-07-2020 04:14 PM            

quote:

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Created Date:
c. 1830

Description:

Born Cherokee town of Tuskegee, eastern Tennessee

Sequoyah, the son of a Cherokee chief’s daughter and a fur trader from Virginia, was a warrior and hunter and, some say, a silversmith. For twelve years he worked to devise a method of writing for the Cherokee language. His syllabary of eighty-five symbols representing vowel and consonant sounds was approved by the Cherokee chiefs in 1825. The simple utilitarian system made possible a rapid spread of literacy throughout the Cherokee nation. Medicine men set down ceremonies for healing, divination, war, and traditional ball games; missionaries translated hymns and the New Testament into the native language; and in 1828 the Cherokee Phoenix, a weekly bilingual newspaper, began publication at New Echota, Georgia.

The original portrait of Sequoyah, commissioned by Thomas McKenney and painted by Charles Bird King, was destroyed by the fire that swept through the Smithsonian Castle building in January 1865.

Creator:
Henry Inman, 28 Oct 1801 - 17 Jan 1846, Charles Bird King, 26 Sep 1785 - 18 Mar 1862, Sequoyah, c. 1770 - Aug 1843

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