Sequoyah

Nobody agrees on when Sequoyah was born or who his father was — a Virginia trader, a German peddler, or a frontiersman connected to Christopher Gist, depending on which account you believe. His mother raised him alone under Cherokee matrilineal custom, and some accident or illness left him lame, unfit for the farming or hunting that might otherwise have made his living. He turned to silverwork instead, then blacksmithing, then a trading post that doubled as a drinking hall — his own drinking became bad enough that he eventually swore it off and stopped selling it too. In 1813 he rode with the Cherokee Regiment against the Creek at Horseshoe Bend, where he watched men who could fight but not write a letter home or read their own orders.

What Sequoyah built between roughly 1809 and 1821 made the Cherokee Nation functionally literate within years and gave it a newspaper, a constitution, and a legal code in its own language. BriefHistory tells that story in full, the 12 years of work and the wife who burned his notes for witchcraft. What follows here is the war that pushed him toward it, and the divided nation he spent his last years trying to put back together.

Sequoyah's own choices split the nation he later helped reunite. In 1817 he signed a treaty trading his family's land in the East for territory across the Mississippi. He backed out two years later, then moved west anyway by 1824 — one of the Old Settlers who relocated on their own, a full decade before federal troops marched the rest of the Cherokee Nation out at gunpoint on what became the Trail of Tears. He was in Arkansas, not Georgia, when that happened. The people who arrived after 1838 found a rival government already running Indian Territory, and for months the two Cherokee factions came near civil war over who would lead the reunified nation. Sequoyah, past 60, spent his final years negotiating rather than inventing, working with Jesse Bushyhead to force a joint council and a new constitution in 1839.

He disappeared while looking for lost bands of Cherokee believed to have crossed into Mexico, and died there in August 1843, probably of a lung infection, in a village later renamed Zaragoza. Nobody has ever confirmed which grave is his — a 1938 search of the Mexican border came up empty, and a competing claim from Oklahoma has never been verified either. What survived is the syllabary itself, still in use, and the name: a Swiss botanist honored him by naming the coast redwood and the giant sequoia after him, Congress put his statue in the Capitol in 1917, and linguists later modeled at least 21 writing systems, for some 65 languages, on the method he worked out alone.

Sequoyah's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Cherokee syllabary invention
  85 to 86 characters, each a syllable of spoken Cherokee 1821
• Cherokee laws in translation other
  Commissioned by the Cherokee National Council, eight copies 1826
• Cherokee Phoenix other
  First Native American newspaper, printed in Cherokee and English 1828
• Sequoyah's Cabin building
  Near present-day Sallisaw, Oklahoma — now a National Historic Landmark 1829
• Cherokee Nation Act of Union law
  Reunified the Eastern and Western Cherokee governments 1839

• c. 1770 aged ~0 Born near present-day Vonore, Tennessee Raised by his mother alone under Cherokee matrilineal custom; his father's identity is disputed.
• March 27, 1814 aged 43 Fights with the Cherokee Regiment at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend Cherokee soldiers who could not read orders or write home sharpened his sense that the tribe needed a written language.
• 1817 aged ~47 Signs a treaty trading eastern land for Arkansas territory He backed out two years later, then moved west anyway by 1824.
• 1821 aged ~51 Completes the Cherokee syllabary His daughter Ayokeh, six years old, became the first to learn it.
• 1825 aged ~55 The Cherokee Nation officially adopts the syllabary
• February 21, 1828 aged 57 The Cherokee Phoenix publishes its first issue The first Native American newspaper, printed in both Cherokee and English at New Echota, Georgia.
• 1828 aged ~58 Travels to Washington, D.C., as an Old Settler delegate Sits for a formal portrait by Charles Bird King, the syllabary in his hand.
• 1839 aged ~69 Helps broker the Act of Union reunifying the Cherokee Nation Worked with Jesse Bushyhead to end months of near civil war between Old Settlers and new arrivals from the Trail of Tears.
• August 1843 aged 72 Dies in northern Mexico while searching for lost Cherokee bands His grave has never been conclusively identified.

• Andrew Jackson 1767–1845
  Seventh President whose populist policies and Indian Removal Act left a deeply contested legacy. signed the act that led to his nation's removal
• John Marshall 1755–1835
  Chief justice who established judicial review and strengthened the Supreme Court and federal government. ruled for tribal sovereignty, then was ignored
• Wilma Mankiller 1945–2010
  First woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, known for institution-building and community development. later Cherokee nation-builder
• Noah Webster 1758–1843
  Lexicographer whose spellers and American dictionary standardized United States spelling and schoolroom instruction. built a national language tool too