Sequoyah - Early Life

Early Life

Sequoyah's heroic status has led to several competing accounts of his life that are speculative, contradictory, or fabricated.

James Mooney, a prominent anthropologist and historian of the Cherokee people, quoted a cousin as saying that as a little boy, Sequoyah spent his early years with his mother in the village of Tuskegee. Estimates of his birth year ranged from 1760 to 1776. His name is believed to come from the Cherokee word siqua meaning 'hog'. This is a reference either to a childhood deformity or to a later injury that left Sequoyah disabled.

His mother, Wut-teh, was known to be Cherokee, belonging to the Red Paint Clan. Mooney stated that she was the niece of a Cherokee chief. McKinney and Hall noted that she was a niece of chiefs who have been identified as the brothers Old Tassel and Doublehead. Since John Watts (also known as Young Tassel) was a nephew of the two chiefs, it is likely that Wut-teh and John Watts were siblings.

Sources differ as to the identity of Sequoyah's father. Mooney and others suggested that he was possibly a fur trader, who would have been a man of some social status and financial backing. Grant Foreman identified him as Nathaniel Gist, who later became a commissioned officer with the Continental Army associated with George Washington. Josiah C. Nott claimed he was the "son of a Scotchman". In one Cherokee source, his father is said to be a half-blood and his grandfather a white man.