Se-quo-yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V.41Unknown
History
Se-quo-yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V.41
Unknown
Cherokee Indians; Sequoyah, 1770?-1843
In 1828 Gist went to Washington city as a delegate from the Western
Cherokees. He was then in his fifty-ninth year. At that time the
portrait was taken, an engraving from which we present to our readers.
He is represented with a table containing his alphabet. The
missionaries were not slow to employ it. It was arranged with the
Cherokee, and English sounds and definitions. Rev. S.A. Worcester
endeavored to get the outlines of its grammar, and both he and Mr.
Boudinot prepared vocabularies of it, as did many others. In this way,
by having more and better observers, we know more of this language than
many others, and affinities have been traced between it and some
others, supposed to be radically different, which would have appeared
in the case of some others, had they been as fully or correctly written.
Besides the Scriptures, a very considerable number of books were
printed in it, and parts of several different newspapers existing from
time to time; also almanacs, songs, and psalms.
During the closing portion of his life, the home of Se-quo-yah was near
Brainerd, a mission station in the new nation. Like his countrymen, he
was driven an exile from his old home, from his fields, work-shops, and
orchards by the clear streams flowing from the mountains of Georgia. Is
it wonderful if such treatment should throw a sadder tinge on a
disposition otherwise mild, hopeful, and philosophic?
One of his sons is a very fair artist, using promiscuously pencil, pen,
chalk, or charcoal. He served, as a private soldier, in the Union army
in the late war, and there, in his quarters, made many sketches. His
power of caricaturing was very considerable. If a humorous picture of
some officer who had rendered himself obnoxious was found, chalked in
unmistakable but grotesque lineaments, on the commissary door, it was
said, "It must have been by the son of Se-quo-yah."
In his mature years, at Brainerd, although approaching seventy, the
nerve or fire of the old man was not dead. Some narrow-minded
ecclesiastics, because Gist would not go through the routine of a
Christian profession after the fashion they prescribed, have not
scrupled to intimate that he was a pagan, and grieved that the Bible
was printed in the language he gave. This arose simply from not
comprehending him. They persisted in considering him an ignorant
savage, while he comprehended himself and measured them.
In his old days a new and deeper ambition seized him. He was not in the
habit of asking advice or assistance in his projects. In his journey to
the West, as well as to Washington, he had an opportunity of examining
different languages, of which, as far as lay in his power, he carefully
availed himself. His health had been somewhat affected by rheumatism,
one of the few inheritances he got from the old fur peddler of
Ebenezer; but the strong spirit was slow to break.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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