Cherokee Syllabary - Early History

Early History

Around 1809, impressed by the "talking leaves" of European written languages, Sequoyah began work to create a writing system for the Cherokee language. After attempting to create a character for each word, Sequoyah realized this would be too difficult and eventually created characters to represent syllables. Sequoyah took some ideas from his copy of the Bible, which he studied for characters to use in print, noticing the simplicity of the Roman letters and adopting them to make the writing of his syllabary easier. He could not actually read any of the letters in the book (as can be seen in certain characters in his syllabary, which look like Ws or 4s for example), so it is especially impressive that he came up with such a well-developed system. He worked on the syllabary for twelve years before completion, and dropped or modified most of the characters he originally created. The rapid dissemination of the syllabary is notable, and by 1824, most Cherokees could read and write in their newly developed orthography.

In 1828, the order of the symbols in a chart and the very shapes of the symbols were modified by Cherokee author and editor Elias Boudinot to adapt the syllabary to printing presses. The 86th character was dropped entirely. However, the new writing system was a key factor in enabling the Cherokee to maintain their social boundaries and ethnic identities. Since the year 1828, very few changes have been made to the syllabary.