What was sequoyahs real name

After those experiences, he began in earnest to create a Cherokee written language. His conviction that a written language would greatly benefit his people in a rapidly changing world was not readily accepted by all Cherokees.

By Sequoyah had isolated eighty-six later reduced to eighty-five syllables used in the spoken Cherokee language and assigned written symbols to each. This brilliant innovation meant that any Cherokee who simply memorized the sounds of the symbols could automatically read or write anything in the Cherokee language.

In a demonstration of the system by Sequoyah and his daughter Ayoka to Cherokee leaders was so dramatically convincing that the syllabary was officially adopted by the Cherokee Nation. Within five years, thousands of Cherokees were literate—far surpassing the literacy rates of their white neighbors. Sequoyah had single-handedly invented the first written language of native North America.

While this brilliant linguistic achievement was rapidly recognized throughout the western world, Samuel Austin Worcester , a missionary to the Cherokees from the Congregational Church, was instrumental in making the new Cherokee syllabary suitable for printing.

With his syllabary a success, Sequoyah devoted much of his time to studying other tribal languages in a search for common elements. Early in Sequoyah became interested in a tribal tradition that said that part of the Cherokee nation had migrated west of the Mississippi River prior to the American Revolution.

He set out to find this group, a trek that led him westward and southward, and he died in August , possibly in the state of Tamaulipas in Mexico. Sequoyah is commemorated by the state of Oklahoma, which placed a statue of him in the nation's capital. Also, a redwood tree, the Sequoia, was named in his honor, as was the Sequoia National Park. Grace S. Woodward, The Cherokees , assesses the impact of Sequoyah's syllabary.

Once the Cherokee officially adopted his syllabary, a large part of the Nation achieved literacy in a very short time. Following the adoption of his syllabary by the Cherokee, Sequoyah continued to work for the benefit of his people, traveling to Washington, D.

Dedicated to uniting the scattered Cherokee Nation, he died around traveling in Texas and Mexico attempting to locate communities of Cherokee believed to be living in that area. His burial site is unknown. From to , the Cherokee syllabary was used to print articles in the Cherokee Phoenix , a newspaper published in New Echota, Georgia capital of the eastern Cherokee from until The publication of the newspaper along with the organized government of the Cherokee Nation which included a tribal council and supreme court infuriated state officials.

Tensions were heightened when gold was discovered in Cherokee territory in North Georgia.