American Experience

GAYLE ROSS

Sequoyah was devoted to enabling the Cherokee people to have at their command an essential power that he saw white society have, that being the ability to write in the Cherokee language. Ultimately he did something that no one has ever done, and that was create a system of reading and writing in a language when he himself could not read or write in any other language.

CHIEF CHAD SMITH

There was one character for every syllable. So with 86 syllables a Cherokee speaker could learn to write in several weeks. And it's actually much more efficient and effective than you could ever ask of English.

GAYLE ROSS

Within a matter of a few years, the Cherokee Nation was literate. The Cherokee Phoenix; the translation of the Bible into Cherokee; family stories were written down; medicine people wrote down all of their formulas for healing. It literally revolutionized Cherokee society.