This Indigenous man is the only person in history to create a system of writing from scratch by himself.
What makes this even more remarkable, is that he invented it without knowing how to read or write.
The man’s name was Sequoyah. And the year was 1809.
At that time, the 300 diverse languages spoken by Native Americans did not have a written form. Sequoyah had seen white soldiers reading from what he called “talking leaves.” And he was determined to find a way for the Cherokee Nation to do the same.
He worked so obsessively that his neighbours thought he was practising witchcraft, and his wife grew so frustrated that she burned some of his papers.
But in 1821, he finished the creation of his writing system and successfully taught his first pupil: his daughter, Ahyokah, who was six years of age. It was called the Tsalagi syllabary.
Once a Cherokee speaker learned the 85 syllabics, they could immediately read and write, because the symbols corresponded exactly to the sound of the spoken words. With English you need to learn the alphabet of 26 characters, then learn to put those sounds together to form syllables and words.
Within three to five years of its introduction, 90 % of the Cherokee Nation could read and write which was a much higher literacy rate than the white settlers of America.
The news that an illiterate Cherokee had created something so impressive spread around the world. It also inspired other indigenous groups across Canada to do the same.
Pretty impressive for an illiterate Cherokee man in the 1800’s.
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