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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V.
+41, 1870, by Unknown
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870
+
+Author: Unknown
+
+Posting Date: July 9, 2009 [EBook #4241]
+Release Date: July, 2003
+First Posted: December 15, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SE-QUO-YAH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
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+
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+
+
+
+
+SE-QUO-YAH.
+
+From Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870
+
+
+
+
+In the year 1768 a German peddler, named George Gist, left the
+settlement of Ebenezer, on the lower Savannah, and entered the Cherokee
+Nation by the northern mountains of Georgia. He had two pack-horses
+laden with the petty merchandise known to the Indian trade. At that
+time Captain Stewart was the British Superintendent of the Indians in
+that region. Besides his other duties, he claimed the right to regulate
+and license such traffic. It was an old bone of contention. A few years
+before, the Governor and Council of the colony of Georgia claimed the
+sole power of such privilege and jurisdiction. Still earlier, the
+colonial authorities of South Carolina assumed it. Traders from
+Virginia, even, found it necessary to go round by Carolina and Georgia,
+and to procure licenses. Augusta was the great centre of this commerce,
+which in those days was more extensive than would be now believed.
+Flatboats, barges, and pirogues floated the bales of pelts to
+tide-water. Above Augusta, trains of pack-horses, sometimes numbering
+one hundred, gathered in the furs, and carried goods to and from remote
+regions. The trader immediately in connection with the Indian hunter
+expected to make one thousand per cent. The wholesale dealer made
+several hundred. The governors, councilors, and superintendents made
+all they could. It could scarcely be called legitimate commerce. It was
+a grab game.
+
+Our Dutch friend Gist was, correctly speaking, a contrabandist. He had
+too little influence or money to procure a license, and too much
+enterprise to refrain because he lacked it. He belonged to a class more
+numerous than respectable, although it would be a good deal to say that
+there was any virtue in yielding to these petty exactions. It was a
+mere question of confiscation, or robbery, without redress, by the
+Indians. He risked it. With traders, at that time, it was customary to
+take an Indian wife. She was expected to furnish the eatables, as well
+as cook them. By the law of many Indian tribes property and the control
+of the family go with the mother. The husband never belongs to the same
+family connection, rarely to the same community or town even, and often
+not even to the tribe. He is a sort of barnacle, taken in on his wife's
+account. To the adventurer, like a trader, this adoption gave a sort of
+legal status or protection. Gist either understood this before he
+started on his enterprise, or learned it very speedily after. Of the
+Cherokee tongue he knew positively nothing. He had a smattering of very
+broken English. Somehow or other he managed to induce a Cherokee girl
+to become his wife.
+
+This woman belonged to a family long respectable in the Cherokee
+Nation. It is customary for those ignorant of the Indian social polity
+to speak of all prominent Indians as "chiefs." Her family had no
+pretension to chieftaincy, but was prominent and influential; some of
+her brothers were afterward members of the Council. She could not speak
+English; but, in common with many Cherokees of even that early date,
+had a small proportion of English blood in her veins. The Cherokee
+woman, married or single, owns her property, consisting chiefly of
+cattle, in her own right. A wealthy Cherokee or Creek, when a son or
+daughter is born to him, marks so many young cattle in a new brand, and
+these become, with their increase, the child's property. Whether her
+cattle constituted any portion of the temptation, I can not say. At any
+rate, the girl, who had much of the beauty of her race, became the wife
+of the German peddler.
+
+Of George Gist's married life we have little recorded. It was of very
+short duration. He converted his merchandise into furs, and did not
+make more than one or two trips. With him it had merely been cheap
+protection and board. We might denounce him as a low adventurer if we
+did not remember that he was the father of one of the most remarkable
+men who ever appeared on the continent. Long before that son was born
+he gathered together his effects, went the way of all peddlers, and
+never was heard of more.
+
+He left behind him in the Cherokee Nation a woman of no common energy,
+who through a long life was true to him she still believed to be her
+husband. The deserted mother called her babe "Se-quo-yah," in the
+poetical language of her race. His fellow-clansmen as he grew up gave
+him, as an English one, the name of his father, or something sounding
+like it. No truer mother ever lived and cared for her child. She reared
+him with the most watchful tenderness. With her own hands she cleared a
+little field and cultivated it, and carried her babe while she drove up
+her cows and milked them.
+
+His early boyhood was laid in the troublous times of the war of the
+Revolution, yet its havoc cast no deeper shadows in the widow's cabin.
+
+As he grew older he showed a different temper from most Indian
+children. He lived alone with his mother, and had no old man to teach
+him the use of the bow, or indoctrinate him in the religion and morals
+of an ancient but perishing people. He would wander alone in the
+forest, and showed an early mechanical genius in carving with his knife
+many objects from pieces of wood. He employed his boyish leisure in
+building houses in the forest. As he grew older these mechanical
+pursuits took a more useful shape. The average native American is
+taught as a question of self-respect to despise female pursuits. To be
+made a "woman" is the greatest degradation of a warrior.
+
+Se-quo-yah first exercised his genius in making an improved kind of
+wooden milk-pans and skimmers for his mother. Then he built her a
+milk-house, with all suitable conveniences, on one of those grand
+springs that gurgle from the mountains of the old Cherokee Nation. As a
+climax, he even helped her to milk her cows; and he cleared additions
+to her fields, and worked on them with her. She contrived to get a
+petty stock of goods, and traded with her countrymen. She taught
+Se-quo-yah to be a good judge of furs. He would go on expeditions with
+the hunters, and would select such skins as he wanted for his mother
+before they returned. In his boyish days the buffalo still lingered in
+the valleys of the Ohio and Tennessee. On the one side the French
+sought them. On the other were the English and Spaniards. These he
+visited with small pack-horse trains for his mother.
+
+For the first hundred years the European colonies were of traders
+rather than agriculturists. Besides the fur trade, rearing horses and
+cattle occupied their attention. The Indians east of the Mississippi,
+and lying between the Appallachian Mountains and the Gulf, had been
+agriculturists and fishermen. Buccaneers, pirates, and even the regular
+navies or merchant ships of Europe, drove the natives from the haunted
+coast. As they fell back, fur traders and merchants followed them with
+professions of regard and extortionate prices. Articles of European
+manufacture--knives, hatchets, needles, bright cloths, paints, guns,
+powder--could only be bought with furs. The Indian mother sighed in her
+hut for the beautiful things brought by the Europeans. The warrior of
+the Southwest saw with terror the conquering Iroquois, armed with the
+dreaded fire-arms of the stranger. When the bow was laid aside, or
+handed to the boys of the tribe, the warriors became the abject slaves
+of traders. Guns meant gunpowder and lead. These could only come from
+the white man. His avarice guarded the steps alike to bear-meat and
+beaver-skins. Thus the Indian became a wandering hunter, helpless and
+dependent. These hunters traveled great distances, sometimes with a
+pack on their backs weighing from thirty to fifty pounds. Until the
+middle of the eighteenth century horses had not become very common
+among them, and the old Indian used to laugh at the white man, so lazy
+that he could not walk. A consuming fire was preying on the vitals of
+an ancient simple people. Unscrupulous traders, who boasted that they
+made a thousand per cent, held them in the most abject thrall. It has
+been carefully computed that these hunters worked, on an average, for
+ten cents a day. The power of their old village chiefs grow weaker. No
+longer the old men taught the boys their traditions, morals, or
+religion. They had ceased to be pagans, without becoming Christians.
+
+The wearied hunter had fire-water given him as an excitement to drown
+the cares common to white and red. Slowly the polity, customs,
+industries, morals, religion, and character of the red race were
+consumed in this terrible furnace of avarice. The foundations of our
+early aristocracies were laid. Byrd, in his "History of the Dividing
+Line," tells us that a school of seventy-seven Indian children existed
+in 1720, and that they could all read and write English; but adds, that
+the jealousy of traders and land speculators, who feared it would
+interfere with their business, caused it to be closed. Alas! this
+people had encountered the iron nerve of Christianity, without reaping
+the fruit of its intelligence or mercy.
+
+Silver, although occasionally found among the North American Indians,
+was very rare previous to the European conquest. Afterward, among the
+commodities offered, were the broad silver pieces of the Spaniards, and
+the old French and English silver coins. With the most mobile spirit
+the Indian at once took them. He used them as he used his shell-beads,
+for money and ornament. Native artificers were common in all the
+tribes. The silver was beaten into rings, and broad ornamented silver
+bands for the head. Handsome breast-plates were made of it; necklaces,
+bells for the ankles, and rings for the toes.
+
+It is not wonderful that Se-quo-yah's mechanical genius led him into
+the highest branch of art known to his people, and that he became their
+greatest silversmith. His articles of silverware excelled all similar
+manufactures among his countrymen.
+
+He next conceived the idea of becoming a blacksmith. He visited the
+shops of white men from time to time. He never asked to be taught the
+trade. He had eyes in his head, and hands; and when he bought the
+necessary material and went to work, it is characteristic that his
+first performance was to make his bellows and his tools; and those who
+afterward saw them told me they were very well made.
+
+Se-quo-yah was now in comparatively easy circumstances. Besides his
+cattle, his store, and his farm, he was a blacksmith and a silversmith.
+In spite of all that has been alleged about Indian stupidity and
+barbarity, his countrymen were proud of him. He was in danger of
+shipwrecking on that fatal sunken reef to American character,
+popularity. Hospitality is the ornament, and has been the ruin, of the
+aborigine. His home, his store, or his shop, became the resort of his
+countrymen; there they smoked and talked, and learned to drink
+together. Among the Cherokees those who have are expected to be liberal
+to those who have not; and whatever weaknesses he might possess,
+niggardliness or meanness was not among them.
+
+After he had grown to man's estate he learned to draw. His sketches, at
+first rude, at last acquired considerable merit. He had been taught no
+rules of perspective; but while his perspective differed from that of a
+European, he did not ignore it, like the Chinese. He had now a very
+comfortable hewed-log residence, well furnished with such articles as
+were common with the better class of white settlers at that time, many
+of them, however, made by himself.
+
+Before he reached his thirty-fifth year he became addicted to convivial
+habits to an extent that injured his business, and began to cripple his
+resources. Unlike most of his race, however, he did not become wildly
+excited when under the influence of liquor.
+
+Se-quo-yah, who never saw his father, and never could utter a word of
+the German tongue, still carried, deep in his nature, an odd compound
+of Indian and German transcendentalism; essentially Indian in opinion
+and prejudice, but German in instinct and thought. A little liquor only
+mellowed him--it thawed away the last remnant of Indian reticence. He
+talked with his associates upon all the knotty questions of law, art,
+and religion. Indian Theism and Pantheism were measured against the
+Gospel as taught by the land-seeking, fur-buying adventurers. A good
+class of missionaries had, indeed, entered the Cherokee Nation; but the
+shrewd Se-quo-yah, and the disciples this stoic taught among his
+mountains, had just sense enough to weigh the good and the bad
+together, and strike an impartial balance as the footing up for this
+new proselyting race.
+
+It has been erroneously alleged that Se-quo-yah was a believer in, or
+practiced, the old Indian religious rites. Christianity had, indeed,
+done little more for him than to unsettle the pagan idea, but it had
+done that.
+
+It was some years after Se-quo-yah had learned to present the bottle to
+his friends before he degenerated into a toper. His natural industry
+shielded him, and would have saved him altogether but for the vicious
+hospitality by which he was surrounded. With the acuteness that came of
+his foreign stock, he learned to buy his liquor by the keg. This
+species of economy is as dangerous to the red as to the white race. The
+auditors who flocked to see and hear him were not likely to diminish
+while the philosopher furnished both the dogmas and the whisky. Long
+and deep debauches were often the consequence. Still it was not in the
+nature of George Gist to be a wild, shouting drunkard. His mild,
+philosophic face was kindled to deeper thought and warmer enthusiasm as
+they talked about the problem of their race. All the great social
+questions were closely analyzed by men who were fast becoming
+insensible to them. When he was too far gone to play the mild, sedate
+philosopher, he began that monotonous singing whose music carried him
+back to the days when the shadow of the white man never darkened the
+forests, and the Indian canoe alone rippled the tranquil waters.
+
+Should this man be thus lost? He was aroused to his danger by the
+relative to whom he owed so much. His temper was eminently philosophic.
+He was, as he proved, capable of great effort and great endurance. By
+an effort which few red or white men can or do make, he shook off the
+habit, and his old nerve and old prosperity came back to him. It was
+during the first few years of this century that he applied to Charles
+Hicks, a half-breed, afterward principal chief of the nation, to write
+his English name. Hicks, although educated after a fashion, made a
+mistake in a very natural way. The real name of Se-quo-yah's father was
+George Gist. It is now written by the family as it has long been
+pronounced in the tribe when his English name is used--"Guest." Hicks,
+remembering a word that sounded like it, wrote it--George Guess. It was
+a "rough guess," but answered the purpose. The silversmith was as
+ignorant of English as he was of any written language. Being a fine
+workman, he made a steel die, a facsimile of the name written by Hicks.
+With this he put his "trade mark" on his silver-ware, and it is borne
+to this day on many of these ancient pieces in the Cherokee nation.
+
+Between 1809 and 1821, which latter was his fifty-second year, the
+great work of his life was accomplished. The die, which was cut before
+the former date, probably turned his active mind in the proper
+direction. Schools and missions were being established. The power by
+which the white man could talk on paper had been carefully noted and
+wondered at by many savages, and was far too important a matter to have
+been overlooked by such a man as Se-quo-yah. The rude hieroglyphics or
+pictoriographs of the Indians were essentially different from all
+written language. These were rude representations of events, the
+symbols being chiefly the totemic devices of the tribes. A few general
+signs for war, death, travel, or other common incidents, and strokes
+for numerals, represented days or events as they were perpendicular or
+horizontal. Even the wampum belts were little more than helps to
+memory, for while they undoubtedly tied up the knots for years, like
+the ancient inhabitants of China and Japan, still the meagre record
+could only be read by the initiated, for the Indians only intrusted
+their history and religion to their best and ablest men. The general
+theory with many Indians was, that the written speech of the white man
+was one of the mysterious gifts of the Great Spirit. Se-quo-yah boldly
+avowed it to be a mere ingenious contrivance that the red man could
+master, if he would try.
+
+Repeated discussion on this point at length fully turned his thoughts
+in this new channel. He seems to have disdained the acquirement of the
+English language. Perhaps he suspected first what he was bound to know
+before he completed his task, that the Cherokee language has certain
+necessities and peculiarities of its own. It is almost impossible to
+write Indian words and names correctly in English. The English alphabet
+has not capacity for its expression. If ten white men sat down to write
+the word an Indian uttered, the probabilities are that one half of them
+would write them differently from the other half. It is this which has
+led to such endless confusion in Indian dictionaries. For instance, we
+write the word for the tribe Cherokee, and the letter R, or its sound,
+is scarcely used in their language. Today a Cherokee always pronounces
+it Chalaque, the pronunciation being between that and Shalakke. On
+these peculiarities it is not the purpose of this article to enter, but
+hasten to George Gist, brooding over a written language for his people.
+
+His first essay was natural enough. He tried to invent symbols to
+represent words. These he sometimes cut out of bark with his knife, but
+generally wrote, or rather drew. With these symbols he would carry on a
+conversation with a person in another apartment. As may be supposed,
+his symbols multiplied fearfully and wonderfully. The Indian languages
+are rich in their creative power. By using pieces of well-known words
+that contain the prominent idea, double or compound words are freely
+made. This has been called by writers treating this subject, the
+polysynthetic. It is, in fact, a jumbling of sentences into words, by
+abbreviation, the omitted parts of words being implied or understood.
+There is one important fact which I will merely note here that is
+generally overlooked. These compounded words, to a large extent,
+represent the intrusive or European idea. The names the Indians gave
+many of the European things were mere DEFINITIONS. Such as "Big
+Knives," etc. Occasionally they made a dash at the French or English
+sounds, as in the word "Yengees" for English, which has finally been
+corrupted in our language to Yankees.
+
+Of course an attempt at fixed symbols for words was an unhappy
+experiment in a language one prominent element of which is, the
+facility of making words out of pieces of words, or compounded words.
+Besides this difficulty, no language can be taught successfully by
+means of a dictionary, until the human memory acquires more power.
+Three years of hopeless struggle with the mighty debris of his symbols
+left him, although in the main reticent, a mighty man of words. But his
+labors were not lost. Through that heroic, unaided struggle he gained
+the first true glimpses into the elements of language. It is a
+startling fact, that an uneducated man, of a race we are pleased to
+call barbarians, attained in a few years, without books or tutors, what
+was developed through several ages of Phoenician, Egyptian, and Greek
+wisdom.
+
+Se-quo-yah discovered that the language possessed certain musical
+sounds, such as we call vowels, and dividing sounds, styled by us
+consonants. In determining his vowels he varied during the progress of
+his discoveries, but finally settled on the six--A, E, I, O, U, and a
+guttural vowel sounding like U in UNG.
+
+These had long and short sounds, with the exception of the guttural. He
+next considered his consonant, or dividing sounds, and estimated the
+number of combinations of these that would give all the sounds required
+to make words in their language. He first adopted fifteen for the
+dividing sounds, but settled on twelve primary, the G and K being one,
+and sounding more like K than G, and D like T. These may be represented
+in English as G, H, L, M, N, QU, T, DL or TL, TS, W, Y, Z.
+
+It will be seen that if these twelve be multiplied by the six vowels,
+the number of possible combinations or syllables would be seventy-two,
+and by adding the vowel sounds, which maybe syllables, the number would
+be seventy-eight. However, the guttural V, or sound of U in UNG, does
+not appear as among the combinations, which make seventy-seven.
+
+Still his work was not complete. The hissing sound of S entered into
+the ramifications of so many sounds, as in STA, STU, SPA, SPE, that it
+would have required a large addition to his alphabet to meet this
+demand. This he simplified by using a distinct character for the S
+(OO), to be used in such combinations. To provide for the varying sound
+G, K, he added a symbol which has been written in English KA. As the
+syllable NA is liable to be aspirated, he added symbols written NAH,
+and KNA. To have distinct representatives for the combinations rising
+out of the different sounds of D and T, he added symbols for TA, TE,
+TI, and another for DLA, thus TLA. These completed the eighty-five
+characters of his alphabet, which was thus an alphabet of syllables,
+and not of letters.
+
+It was a subject of astonishment to scientific men that a language so
+copious only embraced eighty-five syllables. This is chiefly accounted
+for by the fact that every Cherokee syllable ends in a vocal or nasal
+sound, and that there are no double consonants but those provided for
+the TL or DL, and TS, and combinations of the hissing S, with a few
+consonants.
+
+The fact is, that many of our combinations of consonants in the English
+written language are artificial, and worse than worthless. To indicate
+by a familiar illustration the syllabic character of the alphabet of
+Se-quo-yah, I will take the name of William H. Seward, which was
+appended to the Emancipation Proclamation of Mr. Lincoln, printed in
+Cherokee. It was written thus: "O [wi] P[li] 4 [se] G [wa] 6 [te]," and
+might be anglicized Will Sewate. As has been observed, there is no R in
+the Cherokee language, written or spoken, and as for the middle initial
+of Mr. Seward's name, H., there being, of course, no initial in a
+syllabic alphabet, the translator, who probably did not know what it
+stood for, was compelled to omit it. It was in the year 1821 that the
+American Cadmus completed his alphabet.
+
+As will be observed by examining the alphabet, which is on the table in
+the engraving, he used many of the letters of the English alphabet,
+also numerals. The fact was, that he came across an old English
+spelling-book during his labors, and borrowed a great many of the
+symbols. Some he reversed, or placed upside down; others he modified,
+or added to. He had no idea of either their meaning or sound, in
+English, which is abundantly evident from the use he made of them. As
+was eminently fitting, the first scholar taught in the language was the
+daughter of Se-quo-yah. She, like all the other Cherokees who tried it,
+learned it immediately. Having completed it without the white man's
+hints or aid, he visited the agent, Colonel Lowry, a gentleman of some
+intelligence, who only lived three miles from him, and informed that
+gentleman of his invention. It is not wonderful that the agent was
+skeptical, and suggested that the whole was a mere act of memory, and
+that the symbols bore no relation to the language, or its necessities.
+Like all other benefactors of the race, he had to encounter a little of
+the ridicule of those who, being too ignorant to comprehend, maintain
+their credit by sneering. The rapid progress of the language among the
+people settled the matter, however. The astonishing rapidity with which
+it is acquired has always been a wonder, and was the first thing about
+it that struck the writer of this article. In my own observation,
+Indian children will take one or two, at times several, years to master
+the English printed and written language, but in a few days can read
+and write in Cherokee. They do the latter, in fact, as soon as they
+learn to shape letters. As soon as they master the alphabet they have
+got rid of all the perplexing questions in orthography that puzzle the
+brains of our children. Is it not too much to say that a child will
+learn in a month, by the same effort, as thoroughly, in the language of
+Se-quo-yah, that which in ours consumes the time of our children for at
+least two years.
+
+There has been a great clamor for a universal language. We once had it,
+in our learned world, in the Latin, in which books were locked up for
+the scholars and dead to the world. Language is the handmaiden of
+thought, and to be useful must be obedient to its changes as well as
+its elemental characteristics. For the English of three hundred years
+ago we need a glossary, and to carry down his immortal thoughts in
+their pristine vigor, must have, every two hundred years, a Johnson to
+modernize a Shakspeare. To probe the causes of the change of language,
+to ascertain why even a WRITTEN language is mutable, to pick up this
+garment of thought and run its threads back through all their vagaries
+to their origin and points of divergence, is one of the grand tasks for
+the intellectual historian. He, indeed, must give us the history of
+ideas, of which all art, including language, is but the fructification.
+To say, therefore, that the alphabet of Se-quo-yah is better adapted
+for his language than our alphabet is for the English, would be to pay
+it a very wretched compliment.
+
+George Gist received all honor from his countrymen. A short time after
+his invention written communication was opened up by means of it with
+that portion of the Cherokee Nation then in their new home west of the
+Arkansas. Zealous in his work, he traveled many hundred miles to teach
+it to them; and it is no reproach to their intellect to say that they
+received it readily.
+
+It has been said the Indians are besotted against all improvements. The
+cordiality with which this was received is worthy of attention.
+
+In 1823 the General Council of the Cherokee Nation voted a large silver
+medal to George Gist as a mark of distinction for his discovery. On one
+side were two pipes, the ancient symbol of Indian religion and law; on
+the other a man's head. The medal had the following inscription in
+English, also in, Cherokee in his own alphabet:
+
+"Presented to George Gist, by the General Council of the Cherokee
+Nation, for his ingenuity in the invention of the Cherokee alphabet."
+
+John Ross, acting as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, sent it
+West to Se-quo-yah, together with an elaborate address, the latter
+being at that time in the new nation.
+
+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.
+
+He formed a theory of certain relations in the language of the Indian
+tribes, and conceived the idea of writing a book on the points of
+similarity and divergence. Books were, to a great extent, closed to
+him; but as of old, when he began his career as a blacksmith by making
+his bellows, so he now fell back on his own resources. This brave
+Indian philosopher of ours was not the man to be stopped by obstacles.
+He procured some articles for the Indian trade he had learned in his
+boyhood, and putting these and his provisions and camping equipage in
+an ox-cart, he took a Cherokee boy with him as driver and companion,
+and started out among the wild Indians of the plain and mountain, on a
+philological crusade such as the world never saw.
+
+One of the most remarkable features of his experience was the uniform
+peace and kindness with which his brethren of the prairie received him.
+They furnished him means, too, to prosecute his inquiries in each tribe
+or clan. That they should be more sullen and reticent to white men is
+not wonderful when we reflect that they have a suspicion that all these
+pretended inquirers in science or religion have a lurking eye to real
+estate. Several journeys were made. The task was so vast it might have
+discouraged him. He started on his longest and his last journey. There
+was among the Cherokees a tradition that part of their nation was
+somewhere in New Mexico, separated from them before the advent of the
+whites. Se-quo-yah knew this, and expected in his rambles to meet them.
+He had camped on the spurs of the Rocky Mountains; he had threaded the
+valleys of New Mexico; looked at the adobe villages of the Pueblos, and
+among the race, neither Indian nor Spaniard, with swarthy face and
+unkempt hair. He had occasion to moralize over those who had
+voluntarily become the slaves of others even meaner than themselves,
+who spoke a jargon neither Indian nor Spanish. Catholics in name, who
+ate red pepper pies, gambled like the fashionable frequenters of Baden,
+and swore like troopers.
+
+It was late in the year 1842 that the wanderer, sick of a fever, worn
+and weary, halted his ox-cart near San Fernandino, in Northern Mexico.
+Fate had willed that his work should die with him. But little of his
+labor was saved, and that not enough to aid any one to develop his
+idea. Bad nursing, exposure, and lack of proper medical attendance
+finished the work. He sleeps, not far from the Rio Grande, the greatest
+of his race.
+
+At one time Congress contemplated having his remains removed and a
+monument erected over them; it was postponed, however.
+
+The Legislature of the Little Cherokee Nation every year includes in
+its general appropriations a pension of three hundred dollars to his
+widow--the only literary pension paid in the United States.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly,
+V. 41, 1870, by Unknown
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SE-QUO-YAH ***
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