Sequoyah was born in 1776 in the Cherokee town of Tuskegee, in present day Monroe County. His English name was George Gist; his Cherokee name Sequoyah. His father was a white fur trader and his mother a member of a prominent Cherokee family.  

Sequoyah was raised in a manner typical of Cherokee children of that era, but he spent much of his youth exposed to white culture. For instance, he was trained as a blacksmith – certainly something that wasn’t a part of Cherokee culture. During the War of 1812 and the Creek War of 1813-14 he fought on the side of the Americans. Legend has it that he first got the idea to create an alphabet for the Cherokee people when he saw soldiers writing letters home during that war.

Convinced his people needed a language, Sequoyah spent several years creating one, coming up with new symbols for every sound in the Cherokee language. Legend has it that he first demonstrated his new written language to other Cherokees at a tribal meeting, with his daughter reading something that he had written. Sequoyah’s new “talking leaves,” as they were sometimes known, caught on so fast within the Cherokee nation that by the late 1820s it is believed that the literacy rate among Cherokees was higher than it was for whites who lived near them. Starting in 1828, the Cherokees even had their own newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, all written in the new language. However, Sequoyah’s language came too late to make any real impact on the sad fate that awaited the Cherokee nation.

Some parts our history are painful to recount. The Trail of Tears is one of those parts.   

When Tennessee first became a state, it consisted of about one-eighth of the land that it does today. Most of the rest of the land still belonged to the Native American tribes. However, as the years passed, the American government purchased those lands from the Native Americans. The biggest single purchase came in 1818, when Tennessee acquired its western third via the Chickasaw Purchase.   

After that, the only part of Tennessee still left to Native Americans was the southeast part that was owned by the Cherokees. Meanwhile the Cherokees also still inhabited large parts of western North Carolina and northwest Georgia.   

By this time many Cherokees had adapted white culture. The Cherokees were no longer on the warpath. Many Cherokees had large farms and sold their goods at market just like other farmers; while there were Cherokees working as blacksmiths, tailors, and other things. The Cherokees had largely adopted the Christian religion, and some of them had even fought on the American side in the war of 1812 and the Creek War of 1813-14. And, thanks to Sequoyah, the Cherokees now had a written language and their own newspaper.

Nevertheless, Americans still wanted all of the Cherokees’ land – call it greed if you must. Many leaders in and around Tennessee felt this way. One of them, Andrew Jackson, was elected president in 1828. Jackson generally hated Native Americans, describing them as “immoral” and “wandering savages” – although he could be kind to them on an individual basis. He had fought against them many times – most notably at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in present-day Alabama, when he led an army that defeated the Creeks.

The same year Jackson was elected, a Cherokee boy discovered gold in northwest Georgia – right in the middle of the Cherokee land. As soon as this happened, white prospectors (people looking to find gold) poured into the area. Some whites, hoping to run the Cherokees off of their land, began sneaking onto Cherokee country and plundering and burning homes in an attempt to run them off. The Cherokee lost the legal battle that followed. Banned by the Georgia government from taking part in political activity, they moved their capital just across the Georgia/Tennessee line to Red Clay.

By 1838 many Native Americans of various tribes had given up and moved west, while others still refused. But in May of that year the federal government began rounding them up and forcing them to go west, in an event that we now call the Trail of Tears.   

Here is how one book describes what happened when American troops showed up to remove the Cherokees:   

"Without warning, the troops burst into Cherokee homes, dragged the people outside, and drove them toward staging camps. Anyone moving too slowly was prodded by a soldier’s bayonet. Following almost on the heels of the soldiers came neighboring whites who swept up the Cherokee’s personal possessions just as soon as the soldiers had forced the Indians from their homes. Like pirates, the whites stuffed sacks with pots, pans, silverware, and musical instruments, all looted from Cherokee houses and cabins."

After being packed into “staging areas” – generally nothing more than fenced-in areas guarded by soldiers – around 16,000 Cherokees were marched northwest from present-day Chattanooga up through Murfreesboro, Nashville, and Clarksville and into Kentucky, enroute to present-day Oklahoma. The journey took over a year and a half, and it is estimated that one in four of the people who traveled this route died along the way.

Many years later, an old soldier had this to say about what he saw during the removal of the Native Americans. “I fought through the Civil War and I have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew.”

Click here for a remarkable account of how one Cherokee man and his wife escaped during the Trail of Tears and made it back to their homeland.