5. Sequoyah gave a written language to the Cherokee before vanishing forever
Sequoyah, known as George Gist and sometimes George Guess in English, was a silversmith of the Cherokee Indian tribe. His greatest achievement was the creation of a syllabary, which gave the Cherokee the ability to read and write in their own language. Sequoyah was one of the very few individuals to independently create a syllabary for a pre-literate people in history, and the members of his tribe rapidly recognized its value, with the tribal elders officially adopting it in 1825, only four years after it was created. Sequoyah, who had been lame since childhood (with one leg shorter than the other), became a hero of the Cherokee nation, and Cherokee law was produced on paper, as well as tribal records. Newspapers in the Cherokee language appeared. Sequoyah settled on Cherokee land in western Arkansas, and eventually joined the delegation to discuss resettlement in the Indian Territory.
In 1842 Sequoyah, who envisioned reuniting the scattered Cherokee bands into one centralized nation in the Indian Territory, traveled to Mexico to attempt to persuade some of the smaller groups of Cherokee who had settled there to return to the United States. While on his journey, he vanished without a trace. A document surfaced in 1845 on which three Cherokee made their mark, and two white settlers signed, attesting to Sequoyah’s death (as George Guess) in 1843. The document designated a gravesite, which was located in 1938, but whether the grave contained the remains of Sequoyah could not be conclusively determined. Another grave was found in a cave containing a skeleton with one leg shorter than the other, a Cherokee pipe, and some other items, but the site was north of the Mexican border. Sequoyah’s fate remains unknown.