However, Sequoyah's motivation to create a system that would immortalize the ideals of the Cherokees was far to great for him to stop. He devised an alphabet of eighty-six characters and six symbols derived from Greek, Hebrew, and English that would come to be known as the Cherokee syllabary. He utilized these characters to symbolize all combinations of sounds in the Cherokee tongue. Soon he was in front of a gathering of Cherokee leaders to prove, with the use of his daughter, that the Cherokees could be "the first tribe north of Mexico to have its own universally intelligible writing system"(Dockstader 259). And that is exactly what they did.
In 1821 the Cherokee Indians adopted Sequoyahs system of syllabary. By the year 1822 most Cherokees could read and right in this new Cherokee language due to the "each-one-teach-one literacy campaign"(Keroe 197). In 1828 the Cherokee syllabary was used in the press as "the Cherokee Tribal Council established its own publication, Cherokee Phoenix and Indian Advocate, a weekly newspaper"(Dockstader 259). With this in mind, it is no wonder that Sequoyah was awarded a lifetime pension for the creation of this new alphabet. This was the first pension ever given by an Indian tribe(Dockstader 260). He continued his wonderful journey of learning with a trip out west to try to find "lost" Cherokees; that is Cherokees that had wondered from the east and were off rebuilding in the west somewhere. He made it as far as San Cranto, Mexico, where he died in August 1843. A statue was built in memory of him and rests in Capitols Statuary Hall in Oklahoma, but perhaps the greatest memorial of all is the giant redwood known as the Sequoia tree. The oldest living thing in North America, it will forever memorialize the great Cherokee called Sequoyah. Further studies could be done to find out how the Cherokee syllabary is used today and what significance it had in the life of Cherokees in general.
Sequoyah The Cherokee tribe is just one of the many tribes in North America. ... Sequoyah, the most famous Cherokee, was the inventor of the written Cherokee syllabry. ... Sequoyah was born along the Tennessee River in the small village of Tuskegee, Tennessee in the 1770's. Unlike most Cherokee leaders Sequoyah was only half Cherokee. ... This is why Sequoyah is the most famous Cherokee Leader...
I heard Baleale and her husband, Sequoyah, who was a blacksmith, talking quietly with each other. "17,000 of us, Baleale." Sequoyah whispered, shaking his head in disappointment. ... "I know, Sequoyah What have we done to deserve this we've done nothing but good.... We were able to communicate with each other thanks to Sequoyah. ...
40,000 years ago, the Cherokee, meaning people of fire, were a small tribe in Siberia, during the ice age. Then one day, a bridge appeared. The Cherokee followed the migrating animals in search of better land. They came onto American soil and traveled south to what is now Georgia and North Carolina....
A year-round ranger station and campground located at Square Tower provides directions to the other sites".(3) Sequoyah of the Cherokee developed an alphabet for his people so that the written word could become part of his people's legacy, but beyond that much of what is known by Indians and about Indians has passed from mouth to mouth, generation to generation. ...
One of the hottest issues today in education is accountability. Students across the nation are required to take exams in classes as a prerequisite for receiving course credit or a diploma. But can a student be held accountable for something never taught to them? What if the instructor does not know the content and therefore cannot teach it? What if the classroom management style is of such an extreme that the students cannot learn in it? ...
Jacksonian Democrats viewed themselves as the guardians of the United States Constitution, political democracy, individual liberty, and equality of economic opportunity. In the light of the following documents and your knowledge of the 1820s and 1830s. To what extent do you agree with the Jacksonian...
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