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1776 - Born in the Cherokee village of Tuskegee on the Tennessee River, Sequoyah was a mixed blood whose mother, Wureth, belonged to the Paint Clan. Sometimes the young man was known by his English name, George Gist or Guess, a legacy from his white father.
1809 - Handicapped from a hunting accident and therefore having more time for contemplation and study, Sequoyah supposedly set about to devise his own system of communication.
1812 - He devoted the next dozen years to his task, taking time to serve as a soldier in the War and the Creek War. Despite constant ridicule by friends and even family members, and accusations that he was insane or practicing witchcraft, Sequoyah became obsessed with his work on the Cherokee language.
- Sequoyah’s demonstration of the system before a gathering of astonished tribal leaders was so dramatically convincing that it promptly led to the official approval of the syllabary.
1827 - The Cherokee council appropriated funding for the establishment of a national newspaper. Early the following year, the hand press and syllabary characters in type were shipped by water from Boston and transported overland the last two hundred miles by wagon to the capital of the Cherokee Nation, New Echota.
1828 - The inaugural issue of the newspaper, "Tsa la gi Tsu lehisanunhi" or "Cherokee Phoenix", printed in parallel columns in Cherokee and English appeared on February 21st. It was the first Indian newspaper published in the United States".
1809 - Handicapped from a hunting accident and therefore having more time for contemplation and study, Sequoyah supposedly set about to devise his own system of communication.
1812 - He devoted the next dozen years to his task, taking time to serve as a soldier in the War and the Creek War. Despite constant ridicule by friends and even family members, and accusations that he was insane or practicing witchcraft, Sequoyah became obsessed with his work on the Cherokee language.
- Sequoyah’s demonstration of the system before a gathering of astonished tribal leaders was so dramatically convincing that it promptly led to the official approval of the syllabary.
1827 - The Cherokee council appropriated funding for the establishment of a national newspaper. Early the following year, the hand press and syllabary characters in type were shipped by water from Boston and transported overland the last two hundred miles by wagon to the capital of the Cherokee Nation, New Echota.
1828 - The inaugural issue of the newspaper, "Tsa la gi Tsu lehisanunhi" or "Cherokee Phoenix", printed in parallel columns in Cherokee and English appeared on February 21st. It was the first Indian newspaper published in the United States".
  | Page last updated: 12:48am, 31st Mar '07 |
Related Books
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Sequoyah: The Cherokee Man Who Gave His People Writing (Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Honor (Awards)) by James Rumford (Hardcover - Nov 1, 2004) The story of Sequoyah is the tale of an ordinary man with an extraordinary ideaâto create a writing system for the Cherokee Indians and turn his people into a nation of readers and writers. The...  Usually ships in 24 hours |
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Separate Peoples, One Land: The Minds of Cherokees, Blacks, and Whites on the Tennessee Frontier by Cynthia Cumfer (Paperback - Oct 15, 2007) Exploring the mental worlds of the major groups interacting in a borderland setting, Cynthia Cumfer offers a broad, multiracial intellectual and cultural history of the Tennessee frontier in the...  Usually ships in 24 hours |
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Sequoyah and the Cherokee Alphabet (Alvin Josephy's Biography Series of American Indians) by Robert Cwiklik (Paperback - Aug 17, 1989) |
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Tell Them They Lie: The Sequoyah Myth by Traveller Bird (Hardcover - May 17, 1971) |
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Signs of Cherokee Culture: Sequoyah's Syllabary in Eastern Cherokee Life by Margaret Bender (Paperback - Jun 24, 2002) Bender investigates the Eastern Band of Cherokee's historical and contemporary usage of the Sequoyan syllabary, the written system for representing the sounds of the Cherokee language. Exploring this...  Usually ships in 24 hours |
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Sequoyah (Civilization of the American Indian Series, Vol 16) by Grant Foreman (Paperback - May 17, 1978) |
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