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598 GBOEGIA AND GEORGIANS
accident injured and was thereafter a cripple for life. Thus debarred
from active work, he was still able to make various and distant expedi
tions in a search other than that for wild beasts.
'' Even as a hunter Sequoya was noted for his inventive genius and
extraordinary mechanical skill. He was, too, a craftsman in silverwork
and indeed a kind of Indian Tubal-Cain in the fashioning of metals,
His maiming had caused the development of his reflective, undeveloped
mentality. Although totally unacquainted with letters, his quick ob
serving powers very early made him conscious of the value of the art
of writing and of the power of the printing press among the whites,
although he had little love for the pale faces. What could the Cherokee
do to appropriate to himself this wonderful power which Sequoya felt
to be at the basis of the white man's civilization?
"It would be a most interesting study to follow, if possible, the
niental processes of this child of nature in his long quest of means to an
end in working out his problem for his nation. He had no model for a
guide, not even a blind Indian trace in the wilderness, for no predecessor
had ever blazed a way which might serve even for suggestion. A real or
a mythmie Cadmus had an immortality covering at least thousands of
years, for bringing to Greece an alphabet representing sixteen ele
mentary sounds—mere breathings or ejaculations, of the human voice,
though severally representing nothing; But Sequoya had never heard
of Cadmus, nor of his invention—if the first alphabet was really of
Phoenician origin.
"Hieroglyphs or hierograms—even had Sequoya ever dreamed of
these—would not have answered his purpose. The ideograph, or idea-
hierograph, could not work in Cherokee, for the Indian has never recog
nized the abstract. Mere picture writing was too complicated for the
needs of ordinary life, and practicality was Sequoya's gospel. Nor did
the symbolic hieroglyph offer anything better. Thousands of symbols
would be necessary to furnish expression for even a limited language
and how could these ever be committed to memory by the people and
made of any practical utility. If Sequoya ever thought of symbolism
for his system, he doubtless soon gave up the idea. Phonetics seemed to
offer something better, and to this field the Indian genius soon devoted
his exclusive attention.
"Happily, Sequoya knew nothing of ancient phonetics; he under
took to deal with sounds, not with ideas. Had he undertaken, like the
ancients, to represent ideas by symbols, it is very certain that he could
never have reached his proposed end; could never have developed his
idea; could never have found a workable system of character representa
tion. Turning into the field of real phonetics, or abstract sounds divested
of all connection with ideas or word-representatives—this wonderful
child of the forest set himself to the task of counting up and calendar-
izing—pardon the word—the separate sounds found in the Cherokee
language.
"These he reckoned at eighty-five in number. Arrived at this point
his work was already, for the most part, accomplished. The inventing
of eighty-five character-representatives for these eighty-five distinct
sounds, was a much lighter task. But what infinite toil and research to
examine all the words of his language with their constituent sounds