Sequoyah, creator of Cherokee's "talking leaves"

Stories about Sequoyah, also know as George Gist, differ depending upon the source. Estimates of his birth date range from 1760 to 1776. He was born in Tennessee, the son of a Cherokee woman and an English fur trader. He died in 1843 in Texas or Mexico.

Sequoyah was a silversmith who became intrigued by the white man's ability to read and write. He spent twelve years developing a written language for the Cherokee. At first he tried a hieroglyphic system, assigning a symbol to each word. When he realized there were too many words for this to work, he switched to a syllabary, assigning a symbol to 86 different syllables. He endured ridicule, even from his family. One of his wives burned his early work, considering it witchcraft. Finally he had a workable system, which he taught his daughter, who learned it easily. Slowly it began to spread as people realized the potential. It was said that a person could learn to read within two weeks, and the literacy rate among the Cherokee soon surpassed that of the white settlers.

Today, Cherokee is the second most widely used Native American language and the only one that is growing. This is almost certainly due to the fact that this form of written language preserves the spoken language so that it hasn't died out as so many Native American languages have.

Sequoyah's feat is the only known instance of an individual creating a new written system of language. To learn more about the syllabary, check out this page.