Sometime between 1843 and 1845, he died due to an estimated respiratory infection during a trip to San Fernando de Rosas in Coahuila, Mexico. A letter written in 1845 by accompanying Cherokee stated that he had died in 1843: A party of Cherokee and non-Cherokee scholars embarked from Eagle Pass, Texas, in January 1939. They found a grave site near a fresh water spring in Coahuila, Mexico, but could not conclusively determine the grave site was that of Sequoyah.

In 2011, the Muskogee Phoenix published an article relating a discovery in 1903 of a gravesite in the Wichita Mountains by Hayes and Fancher, which they believed was Sequoyah's. The two men said the site was in a cave and contained a human skeleton with one leg shorter than the other, a long-stemmed pipe, two silver medals, a flintlock rifle and an ax. However, the site was far north of the Mexican border.

International influence

Sequoyah's work has had international influence, encouraging the development of syllabaries for other previously unwritten languages. The news that an illiterate Cherokee had created a syllabary spread throughout the United States and its territories. A missionary working in northern Alaska read about it and created the syllabary that has become known as Cree syllabics. This syllabic writing inspired other indigenous groups across Canada to adapt the syllabics to create writing for their languages.

Legacy

thumb|150px|Carnegie Museum of Art, Architecture Hall, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Sequoyah Alphabet

Due to Sequoyah's contributions and achievements in Cherokee history, there are statues, monuments, museums, and paintings dedicated in his honor across the United States and in various genres.

Science:

  • The genus of the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) is named after Sequoyah.

Museums:

  • The Carnegie Museum of Art, Architecture Hall, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Sequoyah Alphabet
  • The Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Monroe County, eastern Tennessee, features his life and Cherokee culture.
  • In 1964, Sequoyah was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

Paintings and pictures:

  • Artist Henry Inman painted a portrait of Sequoyah ca. 1830; it now hangs in the United States National Portrait Gallery
  • Sequoyah is pictured on the reverse of the 2017 Sacagawea Dollar coin

Statues and memorials:

  • Oklahoma gave a statue of Sequoyah to the National Statuary Hall Collection in 1917. This was the first statue representing a Native American to be placed in the hall. It was created by Vinnie Ream, and is displayed in the Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C.
  • A monument honoring Chief Sequoyah of the Cherokee Nation was dedicated in September 1932 at Calhoun, Georgia. 34.530286°N 84.936806°W
  • 1939, a bronze panel with a raised figure of Sequoyah, by Lee Lawrie, was erected in his honor at the Library of Congress
  • A Sequoyah memorial was installed in front of the Museum of the Cherokee People in North Carolina

Landmark:

  • Sequoyah's Cabin, where he lived during 1829–1844 in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965 in Oklahoma.

Other:

  • On 20 December 1980 the United States Postal Service issued a 19¢ stamp in his honor in the Great Americans series.
  • Addressing the exalted place Sequoyah holds in Cherokee imagination, the Cherokee composer and musicologist Jack Kilpatrick wrote: "Sequoyah was always in the wilderness. He walked about, but he was not a hunter. I wonder what he was looking for."
  • Sequoyah briefly appears as a character in Unto These Hills, an outdoor drama that has been performed in Cherokee, NC since 1950.

In 1824, the General Council of the Eastern Cherokee awarded Sequoyah a large silver medal in honor of the syllabary. According to Davis, one side of the medal bore his image surrounded by the inscription in English, "Presented to George Gist by the General Council of the Cherokee for his ingenuity in the invention of the Cherokee Alphabet." The reverse side showed two long-stemmed pipes and the same inscription written in Cherokee. Sequoyah was said to wear the medal throughout the rest of his life and it was buried with him.<gallery widths="154" heights="200" perrow="5">

File:Sequoyah NSHC.jpg|Statue of Sequoyah in United States Capitol

File:Sequoyah Denkmal, North Carolina.jpg|Sequoyah Memorial in front of the Cherokee Museum in North Carolina

File:Sequoyah-Lawrie-Highsmith.jpeg|Bronze panel featuring Sequoyah (1939), by Lee Lawrie. Library of Congress John Adams Building, Washington, D.C.

</gallery>

Contemporary use of Cherokee

Cherokee is mainly spoken in Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Arkansas; between 1,500 and 2,100 people actively speak Cherokee in these three main areas. A 2018 survey states that there are 1,200 Cherokee speakers who live in the Cherokee nation of Oklahoma, 217 speakers in Eastern North Carolina, and 101 speakers in the United Keetoowah tribe of Cherokee in Arkansas, and that the majority of the Cherokee speakers are people over 40. In the late 20th century, there was a revitalization of the Cherokee language with programs, run by three sovereign Cherokee tribes, and online courses. Twenty-first century research in Austria has established that Endlicher, also a published linguist, was familiar with Sequoyah's work. See Chief Sequoyah, a Sequoia tree in Sequoia National Park.

  • A crystalline chemical compound found by distilling the needles of the trees was described by Georg Lunge and Th. Steinkaukler in 1880 and named sequoiene.
  • The caterpillar of the sequoia-borer moth, a sesiid moth, was named Bembecia sequoiae.
  • During the Sequoyah Constitutional Convention in 1905, the proposed State of Sequoyah was named in his honor, and merged with Oklahoma Territory to form the new State of Oklahoma in 1906.
  • The name of the district where Sequoyah lived in present-day Oklahoma was changed to the Sequoyah District in 1851. When Oklahoma was admitted to the union in 1906, that area was recorded as Sequoyah County.
  • Sequoyah Country Club, Oakland, California
  • Sequoyah Council&nbsp;– A Scouting America Council located in Northeast Tennessee.
  • The Sequoyah Book Award is chosen annually by students in Oklahoma.
  • The macOS Sequoia
  • Many schools have been named for him, including
  • Sequoyah High School, (now a middle school) Doraville, Georgia (Designed by architect John Portman)

:*College of the Sequoias, Visalia, California

:*Sequoyah High School (Georgia), Canton (Cherokee County), Georgia

:*Sequoyah High School (Oklahoma), a Native American boarding school in Tahlequah, Oklahoma

:*Sequoyah High School (Tennessee), Madisonville, Tennessee

:*Sequoia High School (Redwood City, California)

:*Sequoya Elementary School, Tahlequah, Oklahoma

:*Sequoyah Elementary School, Shawnee, Oklahoma

:*Sequoia Junior High School, Simi Valley, California

:*Sequoyah Elementary School, Tulsa, Oklahoma

:*Sequoia Elementary School, San Diego, California

:*Sequoya Elementary School, Russellville, Arkansas

:*Sequoya Middle School, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

:*Sequoya Elementary School, Derwood, Maryland

:*Sequoyah School, Pasadena, California

See also

  • History of writing
  • Bob Benge, Cherokee leader
  • Old Tassel
  • List of people who disappeared
  • Hastings Shade (1941–2010), fifth-generation direct descendant of Sequoyah
  • Tahlonteeskee (Cherokee chief)
  • Tenevil
  • Uyaquq
  • Bible translations into Cherokee

Notes

References

Bibliography

  • Bender, Margaret. (2002) Signs of Cherokee Culture: Sequoyah's Syllabary in Eastern Cherokee Life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
  • Feeling, Durbin. Cherokee-English Dictionary: Tsalagi-Yonega Didehlogwasdohdi. Tahlequah, Oklahoma: Cherokee Nation, 1975: xvii
  • Holmes, Ruth Bradley; Betty Sharp Smith (1976). Beginning Cherokee: Talisgo Galiquogi Dideliquasdodi Tsalagi Digoweli. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. .
  • Foreman, Grant, Sequoyah, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 1938.
  • Langguth, A. J. Driven West: Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears to the Civil War. New York, Simon & Schuster. 2010. .
  • McKinney, Thomas and Hall, James, History of the Indian Tribes of North America. (Philadelphia, PA, 1837–1844).
  • McLoughlin, William G., After the Trail of Tears: The Cherokees' Struggle for Sovereignty 1839–1880. University of North Carolina Press. Chapel Hill. 1993. .
  • "Invention of the Cherokee Alphabet" , Cherokee Phoenix, 13 August 1828
  • "Sequoyah" , Tiro Typeworks
  • "Sequoyah (aka George Gist)", a North Georgia Notable
  • The Cherokee Nation Official Website
  • "The Official Cherokee Font" at the Cherokee Nation Official Website
  • "Sequoyah", NCpedia