chief of the nation, to write his English name.  Hicks, although educated after a fashion, made a mistake in a very natural way.  The real name of Se-quo-yah’s father was George Gist.  It is now written by the family as it has long been pronounced in the tribe when his English name is used—­“Guest.”  Hicks, remembering a word that sounded like it, wrote it—­George Guess.  It was a “rough guess,” but answered the purpose.  The silversmith was as ignorant of English as he was of any written language.  Being a fine workman, he made a steel die, a facsimile of the name written by Hicks.  With this he put his “trade mark” on his silver-ware, and it is borne to this day on many of these ancient pieces in the Cherokee nation.

Between 1809 and 1821, which latter was his fifty-second year, the great work of his life was accomplished.  The die, which was cut before the former date, probably turned his active mind in the proper direction.  Schools and missions were being established.  The power by which the white man could talk on paper had been carefully noted and wondered at by many savages, and was far too important a matter to have been overlooked by such a man as Se-quo-yah.  The rude hieroglyphics or pictoriographs of the Indians were essentially different from all written language.  These were rude representations of events, the symbols being chiefly the totemic devices of the tribes.  A few general signs for war, death, travel, or other common incidents, and strokes for numerals, represented days or events as they were perpendicular or horizontal.  Even the wampum belts were little more than helps to memory, for while they undoubtedly tied up the knots for years, like the ancient inhabitants of China and Japan, still the meagre record could only be read by the initiated, for the Indians only intrusted their history and religion to their best and ablest men.  The general theory with many Indians was, that the written speech of the white man was one of the mysterious gifts of the Great Spirit.  Se-quo-yah boldly avowed it to be a mere ingenious contrivance that the red man could master, if he would try.

Repeated discussion on this point at length fully turned his thoughts in this new channel.  He seems to have disdained the acquirement of the English language.  Perhaps he suspected first what he was bound to know before he completed his task, that the Cherokee language has certain necessities and peculiarities of its own.  It is almost impossible to write Indian words and names correctly in English.  The English alphabet has not capacity for its expression.  If ten white men sat down to write the word an Indian uttered, the probabilities are that one half of them would write them differently from the other half.  It is this which has led to such endless confusion in Indian dictionaries.  For instance, we write the word for the tribe Cherokee, and the letter R, or its sound, is scarcely used in their language.  Today a Cherokee always pronounces it Chalaque, the pronunciation being between that and Shalakke.  On these peculiarities it is not the purpose of this article to enter, but hasten to George Gist, brooding over a written language for his people.