University of Virginia Library

1. Address by Hon. H. B. Tehee

Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen: It is with a feeling of genuine pleasure, not unmixed with a pride common to the citizenship of Oklahoma and a joy peculiar to those through whose veins course the blood not of a dying race but of an amalgamated people, that I respond on this occasion for and on behalf of the State of Oklahoma to present to the Government of the United States the statue of Sequoyah and to join in paying tribute to this illustrious character.

When these proceedings shall have been disseminated through the medium of the press and have been brought to the notice of the Indian of America, he, too, will be thrilled with a peculiar pride and will join us in according to a member of his race a rightful place in the history of his country. This day, indeed, will be an eventful one to the original American, and doubly so to the noble Cherokee.

It is insignificant that that State, intended to have been the great mobilization camp and home of the red man, should have chosen as one of her sons for this signal honor one who had made it possible for that element of her citizenship, considered as semisavage or barbarian less than a century ago, to join the Caucasion [sic] element to maintain and, increase the brilliancy of her star ever since the morning of the 16th day of November, 1907, when it flashed in meteoric splendor across the emblazonry of our Union. From that day to this good and eventful hour this representative people has contributed, by both brain and brawn, to keep the forty-sixth star in the ascendancy and ever increasing ' in luster until its soft light, with the light of the others of the constellation of States, now radiates over the entire American Nation, lighting the path of her citizens and enabling them to progress with complete security of life and liberty, in continued enjoyment of freedom and happiness, and in the assured stability of her cherished institutions and ideals. In the pride of the history of our country, interwoven with the lives of our foremost men and women, with its beautiful legends and rhythmic names of towns, cities, rivers, valleys, mountains, and States which form a part of the warp and woof of our annals, the red man vies with the white man and yields to none.

The man whom we this day honor had the good fortune to have lived in the days when our forefathers, amid shot and shell, laid the foundation of the American Republic, that to-day stands as the champion of freedom and liberty--the common heritage of mankind.

From the story of his life we learn anew the lessons of self-reliance and obedience and the inspiring power of nature. It was the principle of self-dependence, made a part of his nature through the patient and insistent instruction of his mother, fortified by a mother's love that was idolatrous, that formed the basis upon which was builded [sic] his illustrious career.

Being without the elementary training of the schoolroom, he necessarily became sagaciously observant of the things with which he came into contact. The application of this rule naturally inculcated in him an ambition to excel in whatever he engaged, whether it was in the chase of the wild fox or sleek antelope, the sports of the day, the pursuit of artisanship, or the grim game of war, which seems to have been popular in his day, and is not without its popularity in this enlightened age in which we live. Everything he saw and heard furnished a challenge to his untrained mind to evolve a scheme by which his people, when that inevitable day came, were enabled to claim and receive the privileges and assume the burdens and responsibilities of full-fledged American citizenship.

Sequoyah ranks as one of the benefactors of the human family. The immediate effect of his invention of the Cherokee alphabet was amazing. The Cherokee abandoned the chase and the warpath and literally "beat their tomahawks into plowshares and their scalping knives into pruning hooks." The hunting trail and the warpath were turned into avenues of peaceful pursuits. The zeal and excitement of the chase and strife were supplanted by enthusiasm and a thirst for knowledge. Letters and learning flourished notwithstanding the difficulties that beset the Cherokee on all sides by the encroachment of the ever-aggressive Anglo-Saxon, who ever sought to wrest from him his happy hunting grounds, then being made to blossom like the rose. Schools and churches sprung up as it were out of the earth at the touch of the magic wand. The government of the Cherokee took the form of a republican government, patterned after that of the neighboring States, and was, indeed, "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people." Before many moons had passed their manner of living had covered the whole range from that of everyday custom to the highest conventionalities that a capricious fashion forces into the more extravagant forms of social life.

Sequoyah preceded the first general migration of his people toward the setting sun, whence a part had gone 20 years before. He saw his people there in what was the old Indian Territory set up anew the government they had abandoned in the East and continue the pursuit of the arts and industries of peace, though not without untold hardships and privations, and there, with other kindred tribes, lay the foundations of what was destined to become one of the greatest States of the Union, a full realization of which it has been our pleasure to behold, and which to-day pays him homage. Noting the wonderful progress his people had made in the arts of civilized life by his invention, this mastermind conceived the idea of inventing a common alphabet for all the tribes of the Indian race of America. He undertook the execution of this laudable task in the old oxcart of bygone days--the vehicle that was hitched to the "star of empire" that westward wended its way and brought to the western plains the germ of civilization--and for two years this master mind journeyed from tribe to tribe until that fate common to us all befell him and left his task to be finished by the processes of time.

Sequoyah was indeed a child of the forest, with the great outdoors as his playground and storehouse of his inspiration. In the words of his biographer, Foster:

The first music that greeted this Indian child was the sighing of the forest, the musical rustle of leaves, and the song of nature, which he loved through life, which seems to have been the inspiration of his genius and the key to his grand achievement.

The inspiring power of nature has been made manifest frequently, even from the beginning of the world's history, for the God of Nature "moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform." It was amid the thunderings and lightnings on the summit of Mount Sinai where Moses was inspired by the God of Nations to give voice to the Ten Commandments and other laws of upright conduct and honesty in human relationship that have formed the bases of all human law from that inspiring day to this eventful age in which we live. It was on the summit of Mount Horeb, amid the roaring storm and the tremors of the earthquake, where the Prophet Elijah implicitly obeyed the "still small voice" to the end that the judgments of the Great Jehovah should be proven to be more enduring than the everlasting hills. It was on the summit of Mount Olivet, amid the glory of all the kingdoms of the world, where the Father of all inspiration, through the voice of the lowly Nazarene, gave utterance to the beatitudes of literature which have furnished themes for thought of poet, of statesman, of philosopher, and of orator, with a message ever increasing in hope and cheer, courage, and faith to mankind, enabling men to walk toward the mark of high calling with complete confidence and security of a sure reward in the eternal beyond, whence no traveler has returned.

So, too, it was on the summit of the blue mountains of Georgia, amid all the matchless scenes of nature's artist, where this untutored Indian, Sequoyah, was inspired to invent the instrumentality through which the Cherokee were enabled to read in their own language the wonderful story of Christ and Him crucified, and gain a clearer conception of the Great Spirit in whom they believed. And, like the great Lawgiver, Sequoyah was led into the mountains of the Great Western Divide and saw all around him the lands of his kindred tribes, to whom he had gone to find the missing link in the common language, bathed in the gorgeous colorings of the setting sun, and there, enraptured with these scenes of fadeless tints, he fell asleep and found his sepulcher--the place of which to this day no man knoweth, and no man in all America like unto him has since arisen. But somewhere on the southwestern plains, unburied by the hands of man, commingling with the dust of mother earth, lie the bones of him whom we this day commemorate. With each recurring year methinks the shades of his race wend their way through the trackless air to do homage to this patron saint of the Cherokee, and there at that sacred spot with spirit hands lay their laurel wreaths of memory and sing the praises of the American Cadmus.

Heretofore when the red man, accompanied by his pale-faced brother, entered this marble home of our Nation he would note over the east dome hall entrance a sculptural representation of the landing of the Pilgrims--the Old World coming to the New. One of the Pilgrims stepping ashore meets an Indian, who extends to his stranger visitor an ear of corn, symbolic of succor to the needy. Indeed a happy welcome, extended in that simplicity of Indian character and received by a grateful company of Pilgrims. Over the north entrance he would note a representation of William Penn in the act of making his treaty with the Indians, whereunder land was ceded to William Penn and his followers for such articles of commerce then having value in the Indian eye, though in fact of no intrinsic worth, and with felicitations and security of peace as additional compensation.

Doubtless there was no red tape to unwind or roll up in those days that in later years and still in the memory of man attended subsequent transactions, in which there was wanting the element of felicitation, this having been displaced by the, substitution of autonomy as long as "grass grows and water runs." Over the west entrance he would note the representation of Pocahontas, the Indian maiden, saving the life of Capt. John Smith at the risk of her own. A beautiful nature picture of the Indian's simple and instinctive belief in and knowledge of that eternal truth that "whosoever shall lose his life shall save it." This act sacrificial at once brought into notice this maiden of the forest, which resulted in a tie of human relationship that should have immediately bridged the Atlantic Ocean. It should have forever secured the Indian fortune, but evidently, in the light of subsequent history, it did not fully serve as efficacious a purpose in the field of conservation as the Indian of that day had anticipated, but happily it was a link in the golden chain that now binds the descendants of that union in standing shoulder to shoulder battling for the common cause of mankind. And over the south entrance the red man would note a representation of Daniel Boone, of historic fame, coming into deadly conflict with two Indians, portrayal perhaps of the subjugation of the virgin forest and the boundless prairie to the spirit of civilization. These representations, the red man would think, too sadly tell the story of the effort of the Indian to live on his native soil. He would think they too correctly interpret and define the policy pursued by the Federal Government in its dealings with the Indian, which has been the subject of caustic criticism.

But thenceforth when the red man sees in this historic Hall of Fame a figure of his race, standing erect as of yore and touching elbow with elbow with the most noted of the pale face, with poet and patriot, orator and philosopher, statesman and soldier, he will forget these artistic decorations and rising to his full stature, in exultant joy, exclaim to his pale-faced brother "At last my people are no longer strangers to their native soil, 'the land of the free, the home of the brave."' He will clasp the hand of his companion and in firm, solemn, and sincere tones say, "I join you in unmeasured love of our country, in unreserved devotion to her fundamental principles, in complete consecration to her lofty ideals, and will lay my life by the side of yours upon the altar in maintaining these attributes of American character whereon hang all the laws of freedom and liberty."

In the name of the Hon. Robert L. Williams, Governor of the State of Oklahoma, and on behalf of that State, I present to the Government of the United States of America the statue of Sequoyah, the American Cadmus.