Before he reached his thirty-fifth year he became addicted to convivial habits to an extent that injured his business, and began to cripple his resources.  Unlike most of his race, however, he did not become wildly excited when under the influence of liquor.

Se-quo-yah, who never saw his father, and never could utter a word of the German tongue, still carried, deep in his nature, an odd compound of Indian and German transcendentalism; essentially Indian in opinion and prejudice, but German in instinct and thought.  A little liquor only mellowed him—­it thawed away the last remnant of Indian reticence.  He talked with his associates upon all the knotty questions of law, art, and religion.  Indian Theism and Pantheism were measured against the Gospel as taught by the land-seeking, fur-buying adventurers.  A good class of missionaries had, indeed, entered the Cherokee Nation; but the shrewd Se-quo-yah, and the disciples this stoic taught among his mountains, had just sense enough to weigh the good and the bad together, and strike an impartial balance as the footing up for this new proselyting race.

It has been erroneously alleged that Se-quo-yah was a believer in, or practiced, the old Indian religious rites.  Christianity had, indeed, done little more for him than to unsettle the pagan idea, but it had done that.

It was some years after Se-quo-yah had learned to present the bottle to his friends before he degenerated into a toper.  His natural industry shielded him, and would have saved him altogether but for the vicious hospitality by which he was surrounded.  With the acuteness that came of his foreign stock, he learned to buy his liquor by the keg.  This species of economy is as dangerous to the red as to the white race.  The auditors who flocked to see and hear him were not likely to diminish while the philosopher furnished both the dogmas and the whisky.  Long and deep debauches were often the consequence.  Still it was not in the nature of George Gist to be a wild, shouting drunkard.  His mild, philosophic face was kindled to deeper thought and warmer enthusiasm as they talked about the problem of their race.  All the great social questions were closely analyzed by men who were fast becoming insensible to them.  When he was too far gone to play the mild, sedate philosopher, he began that monotonous singing whose music carried him back to the days when the shadow of the white man never darkened the forests, and the Indian canoe alone rippled the tranquil waters.

Should this man be thus lost?  He was aroused to his danger by the relative to whom he owed so much.  His temper was eminently philosophic.  He was, as he proved, capable of great effort and great endurance.  By an effort which few red or white men can or do make, he shook off the habit, and his old nerve and old prosperity came back to him.  It was during the first few years of this century that he applied to Charles Hicks, a half-breed, afterward principal