University of Virginia Library

1. Excerpt from "Miss Muskrat's Address on the North American Indian"
in The American Indian, February, 1927

Another kind of hero, but no less a great one, is Sequoyah who dared to accomplish the task of he set for himself in spite of the jeers of the very people who should have been the first to encourage him.

He was a comparatively young man when he first conceived his dream of a Cherokee alphabet. He had been a very skillful warrior and a very popular youth among his tribesmen. But when he left off these lesser things to follow the path of his great dream he lost his popularity. Oftentimes that is the price a dreamer has to pay if he would make his dreams come true.

Sequoyah's friends jeered at him and called him a fool. Even his wife declared him to be crazy or possessed by a devil. Then in day, at the end of those ten years, his wife in a rage of impatience with this husband whom she could not understand, burned all of his manuscripts and his records, the fruits of ten hard years of patient labor. In the face of even this devastating calamity, Sequoyah did not give up.

He started all over again, and this time with such earnestness that at the end of three years he had his alphabet completed much more perfectly than it had ever been before. It is said that no alphabet in all the history of mankind is more perfect than this invented by one Indian man, and that any Cherokee who speaks this language may learn to read and write it in four or five hours of hard study.

Sequoyah's struggles were not ended with the completion of his alphabet. The first thing he did was to teach his little daughter to read; and then the whole tribe began to cry out that he had bewitched his own child and that both of them must be burned at the stake. There was a long trial by the member of the council, and at last it was decided to call in some of the younger warriors from a neighboring town to sit in judgement of this man who had just offered such a priceless gift to his people. "For," said the old chief, "it may be that the is inspired by the Great Spirit and not by the evil ones."

The young men sat in judgement. They proposed as a test that Sequoyah should teach his jurors to read and write his alphabet. He had only a few hours allowed him for this great task but he succeeded, and in this way the Cherokee alphabet was given to the world. What a heritage of perseverance his life is for all of us Indians who belong to this generation! What a vision for us to follow! What an example of patience and courage.