In the winter of 1821, a man who had never learned to read in any language presented to the Cherokee National Council a writing system he had spent more than a decade perfecting. Sequoyah — known to some settlers as George Gist — had studied the rhythms and structures of Cherokee speech and devised eighty-five distinct characters, each representing a single syllable. Within a year of its formal adoption, Cherokee literacy rates surpassed those of the surrounding Anglo-American population. Within seven years, the syllabary had found its way onto a printing press in the capital at New Echota, Georgia, and ᏣᎳᎩ ᎠᏢᏆ — the Cherokee Phoenix — was born.
A Type Case in Two Tongues
The Cherokee Phoenix first appeared on February 21, 1828, bearing the distinction of being the first Native American newspaper printed in a tribal language. Editor Elias Boudinot set type for both English and Cherokee columns on the same press, joining civic record and spoken memory in one ruled page.