"We're Taking the Genius of Sequoyah into This Century": The Cherokee Syllabary, Peoplehood, and Perseverance

We have met and see one another friends and brothers. I am extremely glad to see you friends and brothers, and I am glad for what you have seen. Make every effort to complete it, for all can see what is going on, it is clear to every one. There is no doubt of its success—do not forget it—that which you will hear of me my brothers and friends. What is coming is wonderful when I think of it.

It has only been fourteen years since we who are called Cherokees have learned to read. I am thankful that the people have slowly understood how much labor it has cost me. Sequoyah

Sitting in the library archive at the Thomas Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I puzzled over this letter. This document was originally included with the John Ross papers, before being moved to the John Howard Payne papers, then finally to the Sequoyah file in the Gilcrease collection. Apparently, the Gilcrease librarians puzzled over it as well. Because it reads, "It has only been fourteen years since we who are called Cherokees have learned to read," the document may have been written between 1832 and 1835. Signed by Sequoyah, the letter suggests that he was grateful that others were beginning to recognize his efforts in developing the syllabary: "People have slowly understood how much labor it has cost me" (emphasis added).

Sequoyah—who developed the Cherokee writing system; who "seems to have disdained the acquirement of the English language"; who, according to contemporaries and relations, had little knowledge of English; and who most historians agree had minimal if any facility with English—Sequoyah wrote this letter, in English?¹

Although he apparently had no knowledge of letters, that Sequoyah invented a writing system added to the initial mystique surrounding his accomplishment. Even decades after its creation, the public celebrated the invention with amazement that an Indian, without an understanding of English literacy, could create a writing system that would bring the Cherokees out of their savage ways into civilization: Sequoyah was celebrated as a Cherokee Cadmus and Moses.² It was as if only Western peoples were capable of such magic. Indeed, even by Sequoyah's account offered to John Howard Payne, a few Cherokees close to him thought he was practicing witchcraft when he spent so many years bent on inventing this system.³

The problem is that while historians and the public marveled at this feat, they overlooked the possibility that Sequoyah might have known more English and had more facility with letters than they may have wanted to believe. He might have eschewed the alphabetic trappings of Western thought to create a writing system uniquely Cherokee. Outsiders could only conceive of this writing system in their terms, terms that related it to their writing system. Samuel Worcester saw fit to rearrange the original order of the characters, alphabetizing them and labeling the system a Cherokee alphabet.⁴ The standardized chart included the title "Cherokee Alphabet" and even today appears in bookstores and museums misnamed this way (see Figure 1).⁵ The Cherokee syllabary has always been interpreted through an alphabetic bias, a bias that not only obscures the instrumental workings of this writing system but also forces its creation and maintenance into Western ideologies of noble, civilized Cherokees who are brothers and sisters because they use a writing system.

The real genius of Sequoyah rests in how well this writing system works to codify the language so that every single use of it helps the tribe's language survive and is a political act that traces its legacy to Sequoyah. If we admit the possibility that he could have had some English literacy, or at least some understanding of letter-sound correspondence, then his development of the Cherokee syllabary and his steadfast refusal to speak English might be more fully understood as political acts of perseverance. At the very least, this letter begs a few questions: What does Sequoyah's selection of language for this letter suggest? What relationship...