Sequoyah

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Sequoyah
ᏍᏏᏉᏯ
SE-QUO-YAH – a lithograph from History of the Indian Tribes of North America. This lithograph is from the portrait painted by Charles Bird King in 1828.
Born	c. 1770 Tuskegee, Cherokee Nation (near present day Knoxville, Tennessee)[1]
Died	August 1843 (aged 72–73) San Fernando de Rosa, Coahuila, Mexico (near present day Zaragoza, Coahuila, Mexico)
Nationality	Cherokee, American
Other names	George Guess, George Gist
Occupation(s)	Silversmith, blacksmith, educator, warrior, politician, inventor, linguist
Spouse	Sally Benge ​ (m. 1815)​
Children	2

This article contains Cherokee syllabic characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Cherokee syllabics.

Sequoyah (Cherokee: ᏍᏏᏉᏯ, Ssiquoya,^[a] or ᏎᏉᏯ, Se-quo-ya;^[b] IPA: [seɡʷoja], c. 1770 – August 1843), also known as George Gist or George Guess, was a Native American polymath and neographer of the Cherokee Nation. In 1821, he completed his independent creation of the Cherokee syllabary, enabling reading and writing in Cherokee. His achievement was one of the few times in recorded history that an individual member of a pre-literate group created an original, effective writing system. His creation of the syllabary turned the Cherokee nation into one of the first North American Indigenous groups with a written language.^[2] Sequoyah was also an important representative for the Cherokee nation; he went to Washington, D.C., to sign two relocation-and-land-trading treaties.^[3]

The people of the Cherokee Nation rapidly began to use his syllabary and officially adopted it in 1825.^[4] It unified a forcibly divided nation with new ways of communication and a sense of independence. By the 1850s, their literacy rate reached almost 100%, surpassing that of surrounding European-American settlers.^[5]

The Cherokee syllabary is believed to have inspired the development of 21 scripts or writing systems used in a total of 65 languages in North America, Africa, and Asia.^[6]

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