University of Virginia Library

1. Address by Representative Carter

In the frontier log cabin in which my early youth was spent, a corner over my father's writing table was set aside for the pictures of notables. Among those I recall now the faces of Washington, Napoleon, Lee, and others. These, I was told, were among the greatest statesmen and warriors the world had produced. The faces of Shakespeare, Hugo, Cooper, and others were pointed out to me as some of the greatest writers, but the picture that engaged my youthful attention most was that of a long-haired, angular-faced frontiersman, clad in hunting shirt and buck-skin leggings, bedecked with a long bow-stemmed pipe, and a sort of turban on his head. I was given to understand that this was a picture of Sequoyah--George Guess--the only American who had ever invented an alphabet, and it seemed to me in my childhood fancies that he was the greatest of them all.

Statecraft, it is true, has been a most potential factor in bringing society to its present high state of civilization, while the arts of war have in the past, perhaps, been a necessary adjunct and evil to our development. But who can say that the man who gave us letters, the man who provided us instrumentalities by which we might record our thoughts and acts and transmit them to living friends and generations yet to come, is not at least on an equal plane in his contribution to society with the greatest statesmen, authors, or warriors, either living or dead.

Sequoyah was the first resident of that section of the country now known as Oklahoma to prominently and permanently engage the attention of the public. An untutored, unlettered, non-English-speaking Indian, yet his genius invented one of the greatest alphabets that the world has ever known. A phonetic alphabet, with a character representing every sound in the tongue of his tribe. The genius of this primitive man gave to an uncivilized and benighted people the means of conveying thought by letters, which contributed so largely toward bringing them from beclouded ignorance and superstition, until within a remarkably short time after the official acceptance of his alphabet almost every member of the tribe--man, woman, and child--was able to read and write.

Oklahoma has abundant reason to feel proud of her contribution to Statuary Hall, not only on account of the appropriate choice of the great character which represents her here, but for the further reason that this wonderful piece of art was conceived in the brain of one who loved our young State and always delighted to claim it as her home--the lovable and talented Vinnie Ream Hoxie.

The statue of this aboriginal American in the Hall of this Capitol typifies and symbolizes the magnanimous spirit of the white citizens of Oklahoma, who have always granted to the American Indian more rights, more liberties, more privileges, and more honors than any other State in this great Republic.