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Sequoyah, for many years, works on his alphabet. When it is finished it is so simple that everyone, including the children, in his tribe learns it.
For hours, and sometimes days, Sequoyah wandered alone in the forest thinking. Often he would be seen to seemingly be playing with small pieces of wood or making strange little marks or symbols on stones. His wife and friends thought surely he was going mad and had no sympathy for him. Months grew into years and still Sequoyah proceeded with his strange ways until the lack of sympathy from the people of his tribe became ridicule and contempt. No one, even after all this time, could figure out what this strange and crippled man was doing these twelve long years. What Sequoyah was doing was inventing a Cherokee alphabet. What he achieved was not so much an alphabet as a syllabary containing 86 characters that represented all of the sounds of spoken Cherokee. When these sounds were combined they produced a written language that was so remarkable simple and effective that a child could easily learn it. It took some time for Sequoyah to convince his people of the usefulness of his invention but, in time, this too was accomplished. Once this was accomplished it was only a matter of months before this group of people who had formerly been entirely illiterate, were totally literate. Recommended Reading concerning other Native Americans: Crazy Horse: A Sioux Love Story: Even Sioux warriors found time to fall in love. Such was true for Crazy Horse when he met Red Cloud's niece, Black Buffalo Woman. It was a romance that was doomed from the start and nearly ended in an age-old Sioux taboo, murder. Many stories and legends, some true while others are unprovable, have arose since Pocahontas lived in the early 1600s. Source: Wallechinsky, David. Irving Wallace. The People's Almanac. Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York, 1975.
The copyright of the article Cherokee Alphabet in American History is owned by Mary Trotter Kion. Permission to republish Cherokee Alphabet in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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