Tulsa World, April 16, 1933
Sequoyah Overcame Difficulties
to Fashion First Alphabet
Mrs. Richard Croker Reveals Intimate Details of Tribesman's Troubles
By Robert Sherrod
"It was early of a summer evening in 1822 or 1823 and the only sounds to be heard in the Indian camp were the cricket noises and occasional call of a thrush to its mate. Sequoyah had gone away for a few days and Utoyu reasoned that this was the opportunity to rid her husband of these insane ideas which had possessed him for so long. Going to the hollow log, she pulled out the sheaves of bard on which were inscribed his weird scratchings and blithely tossed them into the fire.
"Thus the first version of the Cherokee alphabet was destroyed. It had taken Sequoyah 12 years to devise a system of 'marks' which would place his people on a plane with the white man. Now, all this was undone by the ignorance and jealousy of a squaw. Naturally, Sequoyah was heart-broken when he returned to camp. But his despair was hidden under the assiduity with which he applied himself to the re-accomplishment of his task and within one year he again was prepared to show the world that his people could read and write-in their own language."
The above story is told by Mrs. Bula Croker, a direct descendent of the most famous of the Cherokees, who now lives in the magnificent home in Palm Beach, Fla., which was left by her late husband, Richard Croker, Tammany Hall leader of four decades ago. Mrs. Croker was born in Oklahoma and received her early education at the Indian school at Tahlequah.
Before she received nation-wide publicity as the "Indian bride" of Richard Croker 19 years ago, Bula Edmondson gave recitals before many audiences and told many stories of the Cherokees, dressed in native costumes. Although she is only one-sixteenth Indian, she has always displayed much pride in her aborigine ancestry and has spent years in gathering data relating to the Cherokees. She always appeared on the programs as Keetaw Kaiantuckt Sequoyah, using the Indian name to which she was entitled.
One of the more amusing stories she tells, one which somehow has been obscured by the dust of age, is that of how Sequoyah came to invent the alphabet which places him as probably the most intellectual of all the original Americans.
"Sequoyah was addicted to the white man's fire water and used to order it sent to his home near Spring Place, Ga., from New Orleans by an old post road. One day while he was waiting for his consignment of liquor he was arrested by the sheriff. Whiskey was prohibited to the red man, even in the early nineteenth century.
"So, Sequoyah asked himself as he languished in jail, ‘How did the sheriff know I had ordered that keg of liquor, and that it was meant for me?’ This question puzzled him for a long time before he reasoned, properly enough, ‘The marks on the keg betrayed me to the sheriff. I will invent a system of marks for my own people likewise.’ And this was the inception of the alphabet in the mind of its inventor.
"But the creation of an alphabet for a primitive people was no easy task," Mrs. Croker continued. "Remember, Sequoyah never learned English. He could not pattern his ‘marks’ after anything he had known previously. It is marvelous to realize that his ultimate product was so perfect that no change has been made in the Cherokee alphabet from that day to this.
"The Cherokee alphabet consists of 86 characters. It is not one of letters and individual sounds as is English, but consists of syllabic divisions. It is said that anyone speaking the Cherokee language could learn the alphabet and to read and write within two weeks.
"The first word in the Cherokee alphabet, written on a piece of stone one day while Sequoyah was toying with the idea, was tasa-qui-li (horse), the second was wa-ku (cow)."
Probably no Indian in American history surpasses Sequoyah for sheer romanticism of intellect and individuality. Certainly none cut a wider swath across the map of his country. His body lied buried in some unknown spot on the plains of Texas, but his statue occupies a niche in the Oklahoma sector of the Hall of Fame in Washington. His features are preserved in the John B. King portrait, but his name lives in the giant tree in California, as well as in the government ship President Hoover used on a recent fishing cruise.
As an individual, Sequoyah was not impressive, according to Dr. Emmett Starr, historian of the Cherokee nation. Slight and sinewy, with a skin lighter than most of his tribe, Sequoyah was slightly lame from childhood, probably a sufferer from infantile paralysis, and always walked with a slight limp. His eyes were a dark grey. In dress he never deviated from the traditional habilments of his people, always wearing the turban, hunting shirt, leggings and moccasins which all the Cherokees of the early nineteenth century affected.
He was born about 1760, the son of a women of the Paint clan of the Cherokees. His father was half white, the son of a Cherokee woman and a German trader from South Carolina. Until middle life, he seems to have been something of a failure and no-account, having failed first as a blacksmith and later turning silversmith (Mrs. Croker has a ring made by him) but never achieving better than mediocracy in either because of his love for the white man's "fire water." He was married twice, Sallie of the Bird clan having preceded the aforementioned Utoyu as his squaw.
In the middle of 1820 Sequoyah left his Georgia home to go to Washington, where he received the Congressional Medal of Honor in recognition of his achievement which has never been equaled by another American Indian.
The type for the Cherokee alphabet, according to Mrs. Croker, was first cast in Boston in 1829 and the first printed words were taken from the Book of Genesis-paradoxically enough, since Sequoyah was never converted to the white man's religion but always adhered to the faith of his people. Fired with ambition, Sequoyah returned to the home of the Cherokees and established a school for them at Spring Place, Ga.
From this time Sequoyah bobs up repeatedly in the history of the Cherokees as their leader. He was one of the signers of the Cherokee removal act. In 1839 he signed the act of union as president of the Western Cherokees and later in the same year he is signer of the Cherokee constitution. His English name was George Gist.
The Cherokees were removed from their George and Alabama homes in 1838 to Tahlequah, which is still the capital of the nation.
In the spring of 1842 Sequoyah, now an old man, started westward from Oklahoma with seven companions, including his son, Teesce. They reached the Pacific coast but the net result of the journey seems to be that the largest tree in California was named for him. On the return trip Sequoyah died in San Fernando, Texas.
The exact burial place of Sequoyah, like that of Moses, is unknown, except that it is in or near the little Texas town where he died. Mrs. Croker composed this widely-quoted bit of verse about the burial of the chief of the Cherokees:
"O'er Sequoyah's lonely grave
The tall oaks their branches wave
Not e'en a stone to mark the place
Where rests the Cadmus of his face."
The bust of Sequoyah which occupies a niche in the Hall of Fame was paid for by popular subscription of the people of Oklahoma. Vinnie Reem, the Cherokee sculptress, was commissioned to do the bust but died before it was completed. Ahniwakee Hastings, daughter of Congressman W.W. Hastings of Tahlequah, and a cousin of Mrs. Croker, unveiled the bust several years ago.