The wearied hunter had fire-water given him as an excitement to drown the cares common to white and red.  Slowly the polity, customs, industries, morals, religion, and character of the red race were consumed in this terrible furnace of avarice.  The foundations of our early aristocracies were laid.  Byrd, in his “History of the Dividing Line,” tells us that a school of seventy-seven Indian children existed in 1720, and that they could all read and write English; but adds, that the jealousy of traders and land speculators, who feared it would interfere with their business, caused it to be closed.  Alas! this people had encountered the iron nerve of Christianity, without reaping the fruit of its intelligence or mercy.

Silver, although occasionally found among the North American Indians, was very rare previous to the European conquest.  Afterward, among the commodities offered, were the broad silver pieces of the Spaniards, and the old French and English silver coins.  With the most mobile spirit the Indian at once took them.  He used them as he used his shell-beads, for money and ornament.  Native artificers were common in all the tribes.  The silver was beaten into rings, and broad ornamented silver bands for the head.  Handsome breast-plates were made of it; necklaces, bells for the ankles, and rings for the toes.

It is not wonderful that Se-quo-yah’s mechanical genius led him into the highest branch of art known to his people, and that he became their greatest silversmith.  His articles of silverware excelled all similar manufactures among his countrymen.

He next conceived the idea of becoming a blacksmith.  He visited the shops of white men from time to time.  He never asked to be taught the trade.  He had eyes in his head, and hands; and when he bought the necessary material and went to work, it is characteristic that his first performance was to make his bellows and his tools; and those who afterward saw them told me they were very well made.

Se-quo-yah was now in comparatively easy circumstances.  Besides his cattle, his store, and his farm, he was a blacksmith and a silversmith.  In spite of all that has been alleged about Indian stupidity and barbarity, his countrymen were proud of him.  He was in danger of shipwrecking on that fatal sunken reef to American character, popularity.  Hospitality is the ornament, and has been the ruin, of the aborigine.  His home, his store, or his shop, became the resort of his countrymen; there they smoked and talked, and learned to drink together.  Among the Cherokees those who have are expected to be liberal to those who have not; and whatever weaknesses he might possess, niggardliness or meanness was not among them.

After he had grown to man’s estate he learned to draw.  His sketches, at first rude, at last acquired considerable merit.  He had been taught no rules of perspective; but while his perspective differed from that of a European, he did not ignore it, like the Chinese.  He had now a very comfortable hewed-log residence, well furnished with such articles as were common with the better class of white settlers at that time, many of them, however, made by himself.