Sequoya was a Cherokee Indian who invented an alphabet that his people to read and write their own language.
Sequoya was born in Tennessee in 1770, the son of an Indian mother and a white father.
Sequoya was first a hunter, but after a hunting accident he became trader. Sequoya had no education, but he knew that reading and writing were important. He began to work on an alphabet for the Cherokee language. In 1823, after 12years of work, his alphabet was ready. It consisted of symbols for 85 sounds that make up the Cherokee language.