Portal:Indigenous peoples of North America/Selected Biography/February

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Sequoyah (ᏍᏏᏆᏱ Ssiquaya in Cherokee) (c.1767 - July or August 1843), known as George Guess, Guest or Gist, was a Cherokee silversmith who invented the Cherokee syllabary, thus earning him a place on the list of inventors of writing systems. The exact place and date of Sequoyah's birth are unknown, since no written record exists. Speculation and guesswork by historians place his birth at some point between 1760 and 1776. As for his place of birth, it was most likely somewhere in the South Atlantic or South Central regions of the United States. As a silversmith, Sequoyah dealt regularly with whites who had settled in the area. Often, the Native Americans were impressed by their writing, referring to their correspondence as "talking leaves." Around 1809, Sequoyah began work to create a system of writing for the Cherokee language.

After attempting to create a character for each word, Sequoyah decided to divide each word into syllables and create one character for each syllable. Utilizing the Roman alphabet and quite possibly the Cyrillic alphabet, he created 85 characters to represent the various syllables. This work took Sequoyah 12 years to complete. More.