Grant Foreman • The Five Civilized Tribes

The influence that contributed more to the literacy and progress of the Cherokee people than any other was the invention of the Cherokee alphabet by Sequoyah or George Guess, a citizen of the tribe, who spoke no English. At an early day he realized that there was a magic in the written word that set apart from others the man who could read. Inspired by the desire to discover a set of characters that could be used to express the sense and sound of Cherokee language he set to work, and after years of discouraging labor and ridicule by his neighbors, he invented an alphabet of eighty-five characters that the people of his tribe could use. It was so simple that they were able to master it in a few days and soon a large part of the tribe employed the new alphabet in uses never known to them before.

Sequoyah joined the Cherokee in Arkansas in the early twenties, and after his departure the tribal council furnished the money with which the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had a font of type cast in the characters invented by this modern Cadmus, and a printing press was set up at New Echota, Georgia, on which was printed the Cherokee Phoenix, part in English and part in Cherokee. This paper contributed much to the literacy and advance of the tribe until it was seized by the Government as part of the plan to drive the Cherokee Indians to the west. Sequoyah was employed by the Cherokee in their western home as a school teacher, and the Cherokee Advocate, printed partly in Cherokee, carried on his great work of education and enlightenment.

Sequoyah did not take much part in public affairs in his nation, but in 1839, at the time of greatest need, he joined those patriots, who, in p372 face of bitter opposition, were endeavoring to reunite the tribe under a government; and on the part of the Western Cherokee served as president of the convention that adopted their Act of Union to which his name is signed. In the summer of 1842, desiring to explore the western prairies and become acquainted with his red brethren who roamed and hunted there, Sequoyah, then about eighty years old, in company with a few other Cherokee loaded several pack horses with goods and visited the Comanche Indians. After remaining with them for some time with his son and two or three other companions, he made his way into northern Mexico. Here he hoped to find and collect some scattered bands of Cherokee Indians with the intention of inducing them to return with him to the Cherokee Nation. However, his death in August, 1843, defeated his plans and he was buried in San Fernando in Mexico.⁠1

The Cherokee people were appreciative of the great service of Sequoyah and sought to show their gratitude in a manner explained by Chief Ross:

"Head of Coosa, Cherokee Nation January 12, 1832. Mr. George Gist, My friend: The legislative Council of the Cherokee Nation in the year 1824 voted a medal to be presented to you, as a token of respect & admiration for your ingenuity in the invention of the Cherokee alphabetical characters; and in pursuance thereof, the late venerable chiefs, Path Killer & Charles R. Hicks, instructed a delegation of this nation, composed of Messrs George Lowrey, Senior, Elijah Hicks & myself to have one struck, which was completed in 1825. In the anticipation of your visit to this country, it was reserved for the purpose of honoring you with its presentment by the chiefs in General Council; but having so long been disappointed in this pleasing hope, I have thought it my duty no longer to delay, and therefore take upon myself the pleasure of delivering it through our friend Mr. Charles H. Vann who intends visiting his relatives in the country where you dwell. . . . John Ross."

made at Washington & of silver, to the value of Twenty Dollars. On one side was thus inscribed: 'Presented to George Gist by the General Council of the Cherokee Nation, for his ingenuity in The Invention of the Cherokee Alphabet, 1825.' Under the inscription were two pipes p373 crossed; and an abridgment of the above on the reverse of the medal, encircled a head meant to represent George Gist himself.

"Gist still resides in Arkansas and the last that was heard from him, he had adapted his alphabet to the language of another of the Indian nations who had removed thither, the Choctaws, to whom he was teaching the use of it, with triumphant success. Gist is lame — was so, I believe, from infancy. . . . he was troubled with a wife whose capacity was very limited and who did not enter into his ambitions. He built him a cabin apart from his family & there would study and contrive. His habits were always silent & contemplative. . . . To this cabin he confined himself for a year, the whole charge of his farm and family devolving on his wife. When all his friends had remonstrated in vain, his wife went in and flung his whole apparatus of papers & books into the fire, & thus he lost his first labor. . . . after two more years of application completed his work. All speak highly of his drawing & of his silver work. . . . He was about 40 when he began his work."⁠2

p374 More than two years after Sequoyah departed for Mexico, and not knowing whether he still lived, the Cherokee National Council on December 24, 1844 voted a pension of $300 to him by the name of Guess; to be paid to him if living, or to his wife if he were dead.⁠3 In January, 1845 the commissioner of Indian affairs authorized the expenditure of $200 to defray the expense of a party to go in search of him.⁠4 Near the Red River this company met some of the companions of Sequoyah who told himº that the venerable philosopher was dead, and they returned to Fort Gibson. The information was conveyed in a report to Cherokee Agent P. M. Butler:

"(Translation) P. M. Butler, Cherokee Agent, Sir; Having reached the Red River on my way, I met with the following Cherokees from Mexico: — Jesse, the leader of the party, The Worm, Gah‑na‑nes‑kee, The Standing Man, and The Standing Rock. The last named, The Standing Rock, attended Sequoyah during his last sickness and also witnessed his death and burial. Tsee‑sa‑le‑tah, the son of Sequoyah, remains on Red River. He is very sorry that the remains of his Father are buried so far from his own country and remains where he is on this account. As Sequoyah was the object for which I had started in search p375 and having learned the fact of his death, which I communicated to those who sent me, it will be useless for me to proceed any further. I will return toward home. He is dead without a doubt. His remaining family, Widow, two Daughters and a young man live some where in Skin Bayou District. Oo‑no‑leh, 15th May, 1845."⁠5

The first Indian Mission Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church was held at Riley's Chapel, the Methodist Church near Tahlequah on October 25, 1844.⁠6 The Conference was "bounded on the north by the Missouri River; on the east by Missouri and Arkansas states; on the south by Red River, embracing all the Indian Territory in its limits. In this Territory, we believe, there are about 90,000 Indians, many of whom are rapidly advancing in moral and intellectual improvement. There are far better supplied with good schools than their white brothers."⁠7 The membership of the Indian Mission Conference was 3,210. "Of these 85 are white; 2,992 Indians; and 133 colored. There are twenty-seven local preachers stationed — 7 of whom are Indians — 5 Cherokee and 2 Choctaws. There are 27 local preachers — 22 of whom are Indians and 5 whites."⁠8

The Cherokee Bible Society was organized in October, 1841. Its purpose as announced in the constitution, was "to disseminate the sacred Scriptures in the English and Cherokee languages among the people of the Cherokee Nation." It was non-sectarian in character and Christians of all denominations were invited to join. The first year little was accomplished, but interest increased in the succeeding years. In 1844 the annual meeting was held in the courthouse at Tahlequah, on October 16 and reports were received from branches at Tahlequah, Muddy Spring, Honey Creek, Sallisaw, and Illinois. The society had just suffered a great loss in the death of Rev. Jesse Bushyhead and Richard Taylor was elected to succeed him. The officers were all Cherokee Indians except Rev. Thomas Bertholf, treasurer, and Rev. S. A. Worcester, one of the members of the executive committee.

The desire for education in the Cherokee nation was growing and in January, 1845, Frederick William Lynde announced in the Cherokee Advocate that he would open a school at Park Hill. He would furnish p376 the paper, ink, inkstands, quills, slates, pencils and knives for the students to "learn to make and mend their own pens." A debating society would be formed "by the young gentlemen of the school and the neighborhood, and weekly recitations, original and selected will be given by the Instructor and members of the Society. . . . Board can be had for $1.25 per week in respectable families contiguous to the School."⁠9

The next month Dwight W. Hitchcock opened a school at the mission house at Park Hill; the terms were seventy-five cents a month. Hitchcock, a recent graduate of Amherst College, was the son of Rev. Jacob Hitchcock of Dwight Mission. The next spring a public school was opened at Tahlequah with a Mr. Covel as teacher.

The Cherokee Female Seminary in connection with the Baptist Mission was advertised in the summer; it was to be under the superintendence of Miss Sarah Hale Hibbard. The design of the school, the notice said, was the "improvement, subsequent usefulness, and ultimate happiness of the young ladies of the Cherokee Nation," and it was believed they would find there as good facilities for an education as they could find in eastern schools.⁠10

The orderly part of the Cherokee Nation, that of the great majority, was comporting itself much as any well established commonwealth. The regular election was held throughout the Nation Monday, August 4, 1845, and there was no strife. Sheriffs for the respective districts were elected and members of the National Committee and the Council. Notice was published in several issues of the Advocate that on August 16 a society for the promotion of agriculture and domestic arts would be organized and five premiums of silver cups, worth from three to ten dollars each, were offered by the Cherokee Agent Pierce M. Butler for the best specimens of homespun cloth, coverlets, belts and socks. An Arkansas paper cited this as an example to be followed by white people of that state.⁠11

On the date advertised the society was organized with William Shorey Coodey president and several Cherokee vice presidents. Mrs. Rachel p377 Orr, Mrs. Eliza Ross, and Mrs. Sarah Foreman were named a committee to award the prizes. "The meeting was then briefly addressed by Rev. Stephen Foreman who drew a contrast between the state of agriculture as it is now found among the Cherokees, and what it was comparatively a few years ago, when they planted their little crops of corn, beans, &c., by using the shoulder blade of the deer instead of the plough and hoe; and enumerated some of the advantages that would be likely to result to the people from the formation of an agricultural society in the cultivation of the soil, in the management of their household affairs, in the rearing of stock and in the dissemination of useful information on a variety of subjects intimately associated with their present condition."

The committee on the premiums then awarded to Mrs. Nancy Adair of Flint District the silver cup for the best ten yards of home-made cloth; to Mrs. Jane Dougherty of Flint District a silver cup for the best coverlet; to Mrs. Jinny Wolf of Tahlequah District a silver cup for a beaded belt; to Miss Catherine Gunter of Tahlequah, a cup for the best cradle coverlet; and to Mrs. Martha Daniel, a cup for a pair of socks.⁠12

The meeting then adjourned to Sardis, October 11, when a constitution drafted by the president, Mr. Coodey, was presented and adopted. Provision was made for meeting annually at Tahlequah to listen to a program, and for awarding premiums for excellence in domestic workmanship to be exhibited. The name adopted was "the Agricultural Society of the Cherokee Nation"; the object, the encouragement and improvement of agriculture, domestic manufacturing, and rearing of stock.⁠13

There were a number of enterprising men in the Cherokee Nation who did much for the progress and comfort of the people while advancing their own interests. Several merchants at Fort Gibson, Park Hill, Tahlequah and Flint kept adequate stocks of goods which they sold for cash or exchanged with the Indians for beef, hides, tallow, deer skins, coon skins, fox skins, beeswax, wool, and other produce.⁠14

Joseph Vann was an active member of the tribe who owned and ran a steamboat named the Lucy Walker on the Arkansas, Mississippi p378 and Ohio rivers until the boilers exploded and the boat sank near New Albany, Indiana, about November 1, 1844. Many people were killed, including Mr. Vann and his son-in‑law, Preston Mackey. James S. Vann purchased the steamboat Franklin of 150 tons burden for the Arkansas River trade in the spring of 1845.⁠15 In the autumn of 1844 the first cotton gin in the Cherokee Nation was erected by George W. Gunter on his place fifteen miles above Fort Smith on the Arkansas River. It had a capacity of four to five thousand pounds of cotton daily.

Next to the resolute, vigilant, and successful defense of their tribal government against the efforts of jealous and disappointed factionalists to break it down, the manifestation of greatest significance in the Cherokee Nation was the temperance movement. Aside from the enforced removal of the Indians from their eastern homes, nothing had brought so much distress, misery, and apprehension to the Cherokee people as the introduction among them of whisky by white people. At the time they needed every facility and encouragement possible for the reconstruction of their homes and institutions and recovery of their morale, their faltering efforts were harassed and nullified by this devastating curse. All the crimes in the calendar were committed under its influence. Indians neglected the building of their homes and cultivation of crops for their sustenance. Peaceable citizens were terrified in their homes and on the highways by drunk Indians, and hindered in the performance of their peaceful occupations necessary to a restoration of normal life in the country.

The Cherokee Temperance Society was organized by the western Cherokee September 12, 1836⁠16 in the grew as its need became more and more apparent. The emigrants who arrived in the winter and spring of 1839 had witnessed the debauchery caused by the introduction by white people of whisky into their late country and in the emigrating camps along their sad journey. With these scenes fresh in their minds, immediately on arrival in their new home they held temperance meetings to plan campaigns for rescuing their people from the p379 wretchedness caused by these white vultures, and to enable the immigrants better to meet the problems of readjustment. At the meeting of the temperance society in 1843 more than 2,000 members had been enrolled. Largely through the influence of this organization a rigid law for the suppression of the introduction and sale of liquor was enacted by the Cherokee council October 25, 1841. At the international Indian council held at Tahlequah in the summer of 1843 the sheriff seized and destroyed more than 1,700 gallons of whisky introduced within the premises occupied by the delegates, their families and other visitors.

The laws enacted by Congress were intended to prevent the introduction of whisky, but white men could ply their trade profitably without violating them. At Fort Smith, Evansville, Maysville, and other towns on the Arkansas and Missouri border, the principal industry was the retailing of whisky to Cherokee Indians, and there was scarce an issue of the Cherokee Advocate that did not contain an account of a murder of, or by, a drunken Indian. By resolution of the Cherokee council January 10, 1845 the governors of Arkansas and Missouri were solicited to aid in the suppression of this traffic, but in vain.

Another lawless section was that immediately surrounding the military reservation containing Fort Gibson. Here grog shops and brothels were established, usually by a low class of Cherokee citizens who catered to the sensual appetites of the soldiers at the post. In drunken brawls in March 1845, several soldiers were killed and their friends in reprisal burned the houses of some of the Cherokee participants. A military inquiry was instituted at Fort Gibson and when the Cherokee citizens were called to testify, on the objection of Colonel Mason the court held that the testimony of an Indian could not be received to contradict that of a white man; this was the law in Arkansas, the court held, and therefore would be the law in a military tribunal in the Indian Territory.

Much excitement resulted. The Cherokee people held a mass meeting in Tahlequah to express their indignation at the ruling of the military court and the scenes of dissipation and prostitution near the reservation. Resolutions couched in well chosen words were adopted, representing to the United States Government the great menace to the peace and order of the Cherokee Nation caused by the presence of Fort Gibson, p380 and praying that it be abandoned.⁠17 The matter then reached the grand jury at Little Rock, that, with quaint naïvete, condemned the Cherokee Indians for maintaining grog shops near Fort Gibson, which, they said, should be suppressed by the potent arm of the United States. But this grand jury of white men from Arkansas had no words of condemnation for their own citizens who, in violation of the law, furnished the whisky and sent it into the Indian country, or retailed it on the border.

Repeated and disgraceful acts of disorder and lawlessness induced the Cherokee Advocate to offer an explanation that permits an interesting insight into conditions and their causes in the nation:

"The increase of immorality among the Cherokees commenced several years back, and had its origin in the unfortunate circumstances that surrounded them prior to being removed from their eastern homes. Before the policy of removing to the west all the Indians indigenous to the east of the Mississippi river, had extended its iron hand to the Cherokees, their general condition was happy and promising. Their rights were generally well protected. They felt secure in their persons and possessions, and enjoyed peace and contentment. Availing themselves of this gracious state of affairs, so indispensable to the moral and intellectual advancement of all communities, whether white or red, they rapidly improved.

"Their condition was changing, as it were, by some magic influence. The domestic arts began to flourish. Industry secured with their frugal habits, abundance of the necessaries and comforts of life and even many of its luxuries. Schools received reasonable encouragement. The reduction of their language into a written one, enabled distant friends to communicate one with the other, while the weekly newspaper conveyed instruction and amusement to the inmates of the humblest log cabin. In short, their situation was happy — the light of Revelation had dawned upon them with its benign influences and the star of future prosperity glittered brightly in their firmament. . . . When it was ascertained that the Cherokees were strongly, unconquerably adverse to removing West, a regular system of the most infernal vexations was concocted and put into operation by some of the States and private whites, to wear out their patience, to make their situation a p381 bed of thorns and to 'grind them to the dust' or drive them from their homes.

"Treaties were disregarded, — States' laws were extended over them, — the ancient land marks broken down, and the Cherokees left the victims of those who fettered them with chains and cast into the same prison the missionary and the murderer — who converted churches into grog-shops — who flooded the country with whisky — tore down the government of the Indians as if it were a fabric of straw — punished innocent individuals and perpetrated other acts which we have not the time, much less the disposition, to enumerate.

The great mass of the Cherokees remained uncorrupted and incorruptible. But some were changed by glittering silver, some became gamblers, some drunkards, some idlers, and others were seduced from the path of virtue and innocence. From among those last enumerated, may be found some of those depraved but unfortunate beings, who, while indulging the habits and vices imbibed from the whites, commit the crimes that are occurring in our country.

Other sources of crime may be found also, in the traffic in ardent spirits on the frontier, and in the reckless, infractory spirit diffused among certain classes by the singular importance that is permitted abroad, to attach to the restless, mercenary factionists that creep into existence as the Chiefs, Head-men, &c., of this and that party among the Cherokees. The last mentioned, we consider indeed the most prolific of all other sources of crime amongst the Cherokees."⁠18

The destructive floods of 1844 that washed away corn fields and the drought the next year brought many Cherokee people to a state of destitution, and the government of the tribe appropriated money to purchase food for as many as possible. For this purpose depots were established in the spring of 1841 in the different districts where corn was issued to the most needy; not sufficient, however, said the Advocate, to relieve the urgent wants of many. "Indeed, to supply all the poor, is a thing scarcely possible, as they are so numerous, and the obtaining of corn for bread and planting is attended with such great difficulties and expense. All however, will be done, we doubt not, that can be done; and it is to be hoped that our unfortunate men and women, p382 and their helpless, hungry children, will be saved, at least, from the horrors of starvation."⁠19

Contrasts among the Cherokee people were not unlike those among white people. Three weeks after the above account the Advocate carried a notice that fifty dollars reward would be paid for the capture and return of a slave, the coachman and butler of George M. Murrell, a merchant living at Park Hill who was married to Minerva, the daughter of Lewis Ross, and niece of the Chief. Spencer, the Negro, had driven his master to the residence of Capt. John Benge in Skin Bayou district, and while there made his escape. He was about forty years old and had been purchased by Mr. Murrell in New Orleans. When last heard of he was "clothed in a pair of Janes pants. . . . a brown Janes dress coat, three-fourths worn, a silk hat, brim lined with Bombazin. He took with him also a blue cloth frock coat, with velvet collar — also a black dress coat, and two blankets."⁠20

Largely attended temperance meetings were held at Fairfield in Flint district just west of the Arkansas line where large amounts of liquor were retailed to the Indians. The meetings were called by Walter S. Adair, president of the National Society. A large concourse attended in one of the school houses of Fairfield Mission and after a prayer in Cherokee an opening address was made by the president. A Cherokee hymn was sung, then a speech in English by a missionary from Dwight; an English hymn was followed by a speech in Cherokee by Maj. George Lowrey, and that, in turn, by a hymn in Cherokee. After Dr. Elizur Butler of Fairfield spoke, an English hymn, "Stalks Abroad a Direful Foe," was sung and then another speech in Cherokee was delivered. The meeting was then renewed and after a number of speeches and songs in English and Cherokee, the children sang "Come and Join Our Temp'rance Army," "Away With Melancholy, nor Doleful Changes Ring" and then the people were invited to come forward and sign the pledge. Seventy-four signed, among whom "were some veterans in King Alcohol's army." Similar meetings in this and other districts in the nation were held. It was time, thought the Advocate, "that the feelings of the people should be roused to the importance of p383 this subject, and every effort be made to impress it upon their minds. The ravages made by Whisky within a few months past, the murders and other crimes that it has caused to be perpetrated in our midst, to say nothing of the heavy tax thus imposed on our treasury, call upon every public spirited citizen to rise up against the common enemy, and to use every effort to drive him from the land."⁠21

Seven hundred people attended another meeting at the same place in July. Addresses were made by George W. Adair and other Cherokee Indians, and the Flint District Auxiliary Temperance Society, with Cherokee officers was organized. "The congregation was at regular intervals entertained with the singing of some excellent Temperance songs, selected for the occasion, both in the English and Cherokee language. The band was composed of several gentlemen and ladies, the majority of whom were Cherokees. Dr. Elizur Butler "exhibited and lectured on Dr. Sewell's Plates. They contain a representation of the stomach of a man of health to that of the beastly drunkard. This is a new source of information to our people respecting deleterious effects of intoxicating drink, and one I think well calculated to make a deep impression upon the mind. The Doctor showed the uses of the stomach and the great importance of keeping it in a healthy state — and demonstrated satisfactorily that whisky in no form nor shape was needed for that purpose."º

At 2 o'clock a recess was taken "for the purpose of partaking of a cold collation furnished by the neighborhood; this was made ready under some walnut and locust trees in Dr. Butler's door yard, on two long tables prepared for the occasion — one designed for the males and the other for the females. The provisions were such as the country affords; viz. beef, bacon, mutton, fowls, cheese, butter, corn and wheat bread, roasting ears, Irish potatoes, and sweet cold water, mixed with what our people call gr‑wi‑si‑de. This makes an excellent and really palatable drink and one which every teetotaler will say is a good substitute for whiskey." After the program, about sixty more names were added to the roll of signers of the pledge of abstenance. The devotion of those present must have been real, as they sat patiently in a hot room to listen to the proceedings for about six hours, until late in the day before they departed.⁠22

p384 The Flint Auxiliary Temperance Society met at Muddy Spring on September 4 with four or five hundred present, and though the meeting was broken up by a storm forty-nine signed the pledge.⁠23

As the temperance movement expanded, on October 2 a childrens' temperance meeting was held at Tahlequah. Discourses were delivered by the Indians and missionaries, and "the children accompanied by a couple of their number on violins, sung several Temperance songs with spirit and good taste. . . . They were then formed into a procession under three or four neat banners with suitable devices, by Mr. J. F. Wheeler, and having marched about awhile were conducted to a table where they were well supplied with 'sweet cold water' and a collation of the substantials, as well as some of the delicacies of life. The program was then resumed and they listened to a reading of the regulations for the formation and control of a 'Cold Water Army'; to be composed of Temperance children in the nation under sixteen years of age, and officers were elected for the ensuing year."

The exercises were viewed with great interest by the editor of the Advocate "as they must have been by every other man who reflects upon the immense ruin brought on this people by whiskey and other spirituous liquors, and that the shortest and most effectual way of working a reformation among a people, is to begin with the rising generation among them."⁠24

The Cherokee Temperance Society was now firmly established throughout the nation and the annual meeting was held at Tahlequah on October 16. William P. Ross, the secretary, made an interesting report from which it appeared that 585 new names had been added to the roll of the organization during the past year to bring their membership to 3,058. The cause of temperance, he showed, was advancing. With great good sense he stressed the significance of the organization and education of the children under the banner of temperance. "Commencing thus early in life, to march along the path of temperance, these youthful soldiers, now the beauty and hope of our country, and hereafter to become its mothers, fathers, laborers, law-givers and guides, must exercise an immense influence, and perhaps are those destined to consummate the great cause in which they have enlisted."⁠25

The Author's Notes:

1 Butler to Crawford August 6, 1845, OIA; Report of P. M. Butler: Report of commissioner of Indian affairs for 1845.

2 John Howard Payne Manuscripts, Ayer Collection, Newberry Library. Payne collected this information during his visit with John Ross in Tennessee in 1835 (Foreman, Indian Removal, 266). This is part of the material he planned to use in writing a history of the Cherokee Indians. A slightly different version is that of Dr. Samuel George Morton, incorporated in a paper entitled "Origin and Characteristics of the American Aborigines," written by him and read at the annual meeting of the Boston Society of Natural History, April 27, 1842. Attached to the medical staff of the army, Doctor Morton spent two years with the Indians during their removal West. While serving with the Cherokee Indians in 1838 he came to know Sequoyah's son (probably Teesey Guess) who acted as "lingster" or interpreter and told him interesting things about his father and his work. The thoughts of Guess were first directed to the making of an alphabet, he said,

"by observing his nephew, who had just returned from a distant school, spelling some words, whereupon he immediately exclaimed that he could effect the same in his vernacular tongue. . . . Building a hut in a retired spot . . . he discovered himself exclusively to this great labor. His fellow-countrymen grew suspicious of his object. . . . Believing that he was engaged in some diabolical plan to blow up the nation, succeeded in drawing him from his hermitage, when they burned up his cabin, hieroglyphics and all. But . . . he returned to his supposed black art . . . he was soon fortunate enough to exhibit to his people one of the greatest wonders of modern times.

"A newspaper in the Cherokee language was soon published. . . . and had not the Georgians, in a spirit of Vandalism, destroyed their printing establishment, the whole Bible for years past might have been read in the Cherokee language" (The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, XI, 614).

Elias Boudinot, the first editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, took a prominent part in securing from white people funds with which the type and press were purchased for the tribe. Boudinot was succeeded as editor by Elijah Hicks who served for two years. After the State of Georgia had confiscated many of the homes of the Cherokee people and forbade their holding national councils on their lands in Georgia, they met at Red Clay over the line in Tennessee. There in the spring of 1835 it was determined to publish their national paper in their new capital, and a wagon was sent to New Echota for the press and equipment. It was then learned that at the direction of Rev. John Schermerhorn and Benjamin F. Currey the press had been seized by the Georgia guard commanded by the notorious William N. Bishop, with the assistance of Stand Watie who claimed that as his brother Elias Boudinot had helped to raise the money for its purchase, he had a proprietary interest in it. The press was then employed in the interest of Georgia by publishing matter in the Cherokee and English type calculated to destroy the influence of the majority faction of the tribe opposed to the efforts of the Georgians. The Cherokee authorities endeavored in vain to recover their press (John Ross and others to Lewis Cass, April 22, 1836, OIA, "Cherokees East" C 4); the press was last known in the possession of Currey (Currey to Ross September 8, 1835, ibid.). Whatever became of this most interesting implement of culture the Author has been unable to learn.

11 Arkansas Intelligencer, July 12, 1845, p2, col. 1; Cherokee Advocate, August 7, 1845, p3, col. 6; January 22, 1846, p3, col. 1. The latter item contained also the information that Chief John Ross had been elected a member of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.

15 Arkansas Intelligencer, April 12, 1845, p2, col. 1. Lorenzo De Lano of Park Hill was a partner in the ownership and operation of the steamer Santa Fe that plied up and down the Arkansas River. While landing some Choctaw emigrants at Fort Coffee in January, 1849, a flue collapsed resulting in the death of one person and scalding of others (Cherokee Advocate, January 22, 1849, p2, col. 1).

21 Ibid., May 29, 1845, p3, col. 1; ibid., June 5, 1845, p3, col. 1, account by D. D. Hitchock.

[ Cherokee ]

p371 Chapter twenty-eight
Sequoyah and His Alphabet

The Author's Notes:

[ Cherokee ]

p371 Chapter twenty-eight Sequoyah and His Alphabet

The Author's Notes:

p371 Chapter twenty-eight
Sequoyah and His Alphabet