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.
Within a few months thousand of Cherokee learned to read and write using the new alphabet. Soon a Cherokee newspaper called the Pheonix was being published. Its columns carried news in both English and Cherokee.
Sequoya became a teacher and moved to Oklohoma where he continued to teach the Alphabet . the huge Sequoya trees, known for their great size, that grow in California are named in his and honor.
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