Sequoyah Quotes

Can I make the guns green?” came his muffled voice. “Yes, on standby,” said his long–‌suffering mother. “Don't shoot unless I say so. If you start another galactic war you will be grounded until the heat death of the universe.

He should be glad he could still serve Fleet, even if his new job title was Bait.

A striking example from the history of writing is the origin of the syllabary devised in Arkansas around 1820 by a Cherokee Indian named Sequoyah, for writing the Cherokee language. Sequoyah observed that white people made marks on paper, and that they derived great advantage by using those marks to record and repeat lengthy speeches. However, the detailed operations of those marks remained a mystery to him, since (like most Cherokees before 1820) Sequoyah was illiterate and could neither speak nor read English. Because he was a blacksmith, Sequoyah began by devising an accounting system to help him keep track of his customers’ debts. He drew a picture of each customer; then he drew circles and lines of various sizes to represent the amount of money owed. Around 1810, Sequoyah decided to go on to design a system for writing the Cherokee language. He again began by drawing pictures, but gave them up as too complicated and too artistically demanding. He next started to invent separate signs for each word, and again became dissatisfied when he had coined thousands of signs and still needed more. Finally, Sequoyah realized that words were made up of modest numbers of different sound bites that recurred in many different words—what we would call syllables. He initially devised 200 syllabic signs and gradually reduced them to 85, most of them for combinations of one consonant and one vowel. As one source of the signs themselves, Sequoyah practiced copying the letters from an English spelling book given to him by a schoolteacher. About two dozen of his Cherokee syllabic signs were taken directly from those letters, though of course with completely changed meanings, since Sequoyah did not know the English meanings. For example, he chose the shapes D, R, b, h to represent the Cherokee syllables a, e, si, and ni, respectively, while the shape of the numeral 4 was borrowed for the syllable se. He coined other signs by modifying English letters, such as designing the signs , , and to represent the syllables yu, sa, and na, respectively. Still other signs were entirely of his creation, such as , , and for ho, li, and nu, respectively. Sequoyah’s syllabary is widely admired by professional linguists for its good fit to Cherokee sounds, and for the ease with which it can be learned. Within a short time, the Cherokees achieved almost 100 percent literacy in the syllabary, bought a printing press, had Sequoyah’s signs cast as type, and began printing books and newspapers. Cherokee writing remains one of the best-attested examples of a script that arose through idea diffusion. We know that Sequoyah received paper and other writing materials, the idea of a writing system, the idea of using separate marks, and the forms of several dozen marks. Since, however, he could neither read nor write English, he acquired no details or even principles from the existing scripts around him. Surrounded by alphabets he could not understand, he instead independently reinvented a syllabary, unaware that the Minoans of Crete had already invented another syllabary 3,500 years previously.

Covert ops with an eight–‌year–‌old had problems all its own.

Probably the best-known images of any Cherokee are those of Sequoyah, who is virtually always pictured wearing what appears to be a turban and blue jacket of European design. Both were, in fact, common clothing among Cherokee of that era, though not the tribe’s original dress. Although some have claimed the turban as evidence of pre-European contact by Arabs, the real origin of the outfit was more recent. When the first delegation of Cherokee visited England, the tattooed heads and bodies of the men were deemed too savage and frightening for their audience with the Royal Family. To cover up these markings, they were given English smoking jackets and turbans, such as those worn by the Muslim servants of the royal household. For whatever reason, these styles caught on among the people of the Five Civilized Tribes and continue to be part of cultural dress among the Cherokee.

In 1821, Sequoyah (also known as George Gist) developed a writing system for the Cherokee language. Using a system of 86 symbols, each with a phonetic value, Sequoyah assigned syllabic values to each symbol that represented all the sounds used while speaking the Cherokee language. Because the system was relatively simple and easy to learn, the vast majority of Cherokee people became literate in their native tongue within a few years. Furthermore, The Phoenix, a Cherokee language newspaper, began publication in February 1828. Due to these early efforts to assimilate into U.S. society and adopt practices, the Cherokee remain one of the most highly educated Native American tribes and maintain one of the highest standards of living among indigenous peoples.

The Indian was a gentleman named Sequoyah, somewhat older than the young Wilsons and their friends. He nodded soberly to Jamie, and swinging the bundle off his shoulder, laid it on the ground at Jamie’s feet, saying something in Cherokee.

The story, of course, was fraud. Days later, Oklahoma’s Sequoyah Northeastern Health System posted a categorical denial on its website, dismissing the entire story as mere fabrication. That Rolling Stone picture of the long lines was an Associated Press stock photo from the previous January, a photo of people waiting in line to get vaccines. As it turns out, not a single patient has been treated in Oklahoma for ivermectin overdose.

Sure. That four-letter-s-word that has gotten me in more uncomfortable situations than a kid saying the other four-letter-s-word.

Like Cante eying something new, I eye the phone on the table. I’ll just have to figure out a different way to find a lease.