In modern society, there is a tendency to equate proficiency with specialized “expertise.” But much of our progress is due to talented, unqualified amateurs known as polymaths. Our own history is rich with jack-of-all-trades like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. You can also add more obscure names to that list. Sequoia.
Born around 1760 in present-day Tennessee to a Cherokee mother and a white father, Sequoyah was a man of restless intellect. In his boyhood, he invented and built a device to help milk his mother’s cows. He was also a talented artist, making pigments from crushed fruit and bark.
As a teenager, he trained as a warrior, learning to use a bow and arrow, tomahawk, and spear. He learned blacksmithing and silversmithing from his mother and created his own forge and tools.
Sequoia’s only language was Cherokee. Like other indigenous languages, it had no written form. Despite being illiterate, Sequoia was able to intuit the power of the written word by observing soldiers while serving in the U.S. Army.
He set out to create the syllables of his native language, eventually separating the 86 syllables and creating a letter for each one. After years of effort and considerable resistance from Cherokee leaders (who initially accused him of witchcraft), Sequoyah perfected a syllabary that was easy to learn and quickly adapted to by most Cherokee speakers. I let it happen. In 1828, the Cherokees used this newly discovered written language to launch the Cherokee Phoenix, the nation’s first bilingual newspaper.
Under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the U.S. government forcibly removed the Cherokee people from their homeland, stripped them of their belongings, and left many to die. Thanks to Sequoia’s innovations, much of the Cherokee history and culture that would otherwise have been lost survived.Sequoia’s Japanese syllabary is still taught to students today.
