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Southland Times, Issue 19036, 2 May 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Cherokee Indians, of North America, we said to furnish the only instance in modern times of a nation inventing an alphabet. Tiiis feat was done by a half-bred Indian named Sequoyah, but perhaps better laiown as George Guess. Until a year or two before the great idea occurred to him, he did not understand a single letter. Poor, and living apart from his tribe, when he told the chiefs that he had, jiiado a book they rebuked him for his vanity. He was not disheartened, however, but studied harder than ever. His neighbors considered him to be crazy, and his wife thought so too, for she destroyed his papers whenever she could. At first he tried to devise a character for every word in the Cherokee tongue, but gave up the attempt. Then lie thought over the number of sounds in the language. These he found to be sixtyeight. For each he adopted a character, and the characters, which form the alphabet, when combined made up words. Having reached this point, he vailed in six of his neighbors and told them that ho could make a book. Again they disbelieved him. To convince them, be bade them each make a speech, which he wrote down as It was spoken. Then ho read out to each man his own speech, and they all confessed that be really could make a book. And, so, in course of time, the Chorokees of the eastern plains of the fritted Slates became a reading people.