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Show 1 1 0 MYTH8 OF THE CHEROKEE [ ETH. ANN. 19 on an upper branch of Coosa river, in Alabama. The syllabary was soon recognized as an invaluable invention for the elevation of the tribe, and within a few months thousands of hitherto illiterate Cherokee were able to read and write their own language, teaching each other in the cabins and along the roadside. The next year Sequoya visited the West, to introduce the new science among those who had emigrated to the Arkansas. In the next year, 1823, he again visited the Arkansas and took up his permanent abode with the western band, never afterward returning to his eastern kinsmen. In the autumn of the same year the Cherokee national council made public acknowledgment of his merit by sending to him, through John Ross, then president of the national committee, a silver medal with a commemorative inscription in both languages. 1 In 1828 he visited Washington as one of the delegates from the Arkansas band, attracting much attention, and the treaty made on that occasion contains a provision for the payment to him of five hundred dollars, " for the great benefits he has conferred upon the Cherokee people, in the beneficial resulte which they are now experiencing from the use of the alphabet discovered by him." * His subsequent history belongs to the West and will be treated in another place ( 40). 8. The invention of the alphabet had an immediate and wonderful effect on Cherokee development. On account of the remarkable adaptation of the syllabary to the language, it was only necessary to learn the characters to be able to read at once. No schoolhouses were built and no teachers hired, but the whole Nation became an academy for the study of the system, until, " in the course of a few months, without school or expense of time or money, the Cherokee were able to read and write in their own language. 4 An active correspondence began to be carried on between the eastern and western divisions, and plans were made for a national press, with a national library and museum to be established at the capital, New Ecbota. 5 The missionaries, who had at first opposed the new alphabet on the ground of its Indian origin, now saw the advisability of using it to further their own work. In the fall of 1824 Atsi or John Arch, a young native convert, made a manuscript translation of a portion of St. John's gospel, in the syllabary, this being the first Bible translation ever given to the Cherokee. It was copied hundreds of times and was widely disseminated through i McKenney and Hall, Indian Tribes, i, p. 46,1858; Phillips, in Harper's Magazine, p. 547, September, 1870. * Indian Treaties, p. 425,1837. 8 For details concerning the life and invention of Sequoya, see McKenney and Hall, Indian Tribes, i, 1858; Phillips, Sequoyah, in Harper's Magazine, September 1870- Foster, Sequoyah, 1885, and Story of the Cherokee Bible, 1899, based largely on Phillips' article; G. C, Invention of the Cherokee Alphabet, in Cherokee Phoenix, republished in Christian Advocate and Journal, New York, September 26,1828: Pilling, Bibliography of the Iroquoian Languages, 1888. * G. C, Invention of the Cherokee Alphabet, op. cit. * ( Unsigned) letter of David Brown, September 2,1825, quoted in American State Papers: Indian Affairs, n, p. 652, 1834. |
