Native American Cherokee Indian Symbols

The Cherokees Symbols

Native American Cherokee Indian Symbols

Everyone should know of Sequoyah or George Guess or Guest, as he was called in English. He was a Cherokee who loved to work at machinery and invent handy devices. He determined to invent a system of writing his language. He saw that the writing of the white men consisted in the use of characters to represent sounds. At first he thought of using one character for each word; this was not convenient because there are so many words.

He finally concluded that there were eighty-six syllables in Cherokee, and he formed a series of eighty-six characters to represent them. Some of these characters were borrowed from the white man's alphabet; the rest were specially invented. It took some little time ]for the Cherokees to accept Sequoyah's great invention, but by 1827 it was in use throughout the nation.

Types were made, and soon books and papers were printed in the Cherokee language in Sequoyah's characters. These are still in use, and to-day in the Indian Territory, a newspaper is regularly printed by the Cherokee Nation, part of which is in English, part in the Cherokee character. This newspaper is, by the way, supplied free to each family by the Cherokee government.