October 15: Sequoyah’s Cherokee Syllabary
Prayer Idea
Pray for people who are preserving and promoting historic languages.
History Note
Around 1776 Wut-teh, a Cherokee woman, gave birth to a baby boy at the Cherokee village of Tuskegee on the Little Tennessee River in Tennessee. The baby’s father was Nathaniel Gist, a Virginia fur trader and an officer in the Continental Army. The baby boy was named Sequoyah.
At times Sequoyah used his English name, George Gist. However, Wuh-teh reared her son among the Cherokee, and he learned their customs. When Sequoyah grew up, he became a trader, a hunter, and a warrior, like other men in his nation. He also became a blacksmith and a talented silversmith.
The Cherokee did not have a written form of their language. While serving under General Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812, Sequoyah saw the disadvantages of Cherokee fighters not being able to read orders their officers gave them, keep journals, or write letters home to their families. After the war, Sequoyah lived in Alabama and worked diligently to create a way to write the Cherokee language.
Many Cherokee disapproved of Sequoyah’s efforts. Some ridiculed him and accused him of being insane. In 1815 Sequoyah married a Cherokee woman, Sally Benge. According to one story, she once threw his work into the fire.
Sequoyah worked on his system of Cherokee writing for 12 years. He found that the words of the Cherokee language contained one or more of 86 different syllables (later reduced to 85). He created a symbol for each syllable. He examined letters in an English Bible for ideas about how to shape his symbols.
Because the symbols stand for syllables instead of individual letters, Sequoyah’s system is a syllabary rather than an alphabet. Sequoyah’s method made the Cherokee writing system very easy to learn. Once someone memorized the sounds and symbols, she could read or write anything.
Sequoyah completed his syllabary in 1821, and the Cherokee Nation formally adopted it in 1825. Thousands of Cherokee learned how to read and write their Native language. The Cherokee soon had a higher literacy rate than the American citizens who lived around them.
In 1828 Cherokee leaders in New Echota, Georgia, began to publish a newspaper named the Cherokee Phoenix. It was the first national bilingual newspaper in the United States, with columns in both English and Cherokee, and the first newspaper published by a Native nation.
Missionaries assisted the Cherokee Nation in publishing the Bible, hymn books, and tracts in Cherokee. They also printed almanacs and government documents.
In 1842 Sequoyah visited Mexico to locate Cherokee who had moved there during the period of forced removal from the Southeastern United States. He died in Mexico in 1843.
The Cherokee Nation recognized October 15, 2021, as the 200th anniversary of the creation of Sequoyah’s syllabary.
Sequoyah visited Washington, D.C., during the presidency of John Quincy Adams. He was one of 120 members of Native nations who sat for portraits by Charles Bird King. The portrait appeared in the 1844 book History of the Indian Tribes of North America, with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of the Principal Chiefs. Image courtesy the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
Learn More
Watch a video about Sequoyah’s work.
Find more resources at Homeschool History.
