Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 597
in his own little tribe he had solved a literary problem till then unsolved
in all the realm of linguistic science.
"Sequoya, or Sikwayi—known to the whites as George Guest, Guess
or Gist, was born at Taskigi, Tennessee, a Cherokee town, probably about
1760. He was the/fruit of one of those illicit connections so common
among the more civilized tribes. Sequoya's paternal ancestor has been
.variously surmised: by some he (Sequoya) was regarded as the son of
a German-Indian trader; by others his father was thought to be an
SEQUOYA,, AN INDIAN HALF-BREED WHO INVENTED THE
CHEROKEE ALPHABET
Irishman; while still others have held him to be the son of Nathaniel
Gist, afterwards famous for his activity in the American Revolution.
"We are not well advised as to Sequoya's part in the struggle for
independence, nor in the later troubles of the Cherokees with the whites.
We have strong reasons for supposing that in his heart he bore in those
days little good will to his pale-faced kinsmen. At all events he owed
nothing to English letters and little to the arts of civilization.
"Sequoya spent his earlier years like most of his tribesmen in hunt
ing and in peltry trading; until on one of his hunting trips he was by