There was an individual quality about his hoes as well as his bracelets which he valued and desired to have the credit of, and he wished to put some mark upon his work that would prove it to be his own. With this thought in mind, he went to a white neighbor with whom he was on the most friendly terms, and asked him to write his name on paper. Mr. Lowrey wrote it, using his English name, George Guess. From this Se-Quo-Yah made a die with which he stamped all the articles of silver or iron that he made.
His work had not only put much money in his pouch, but was fast making him the most popular young man of the tribe. This popularity came near being his ruin. The young men flocked about him, praised his skill, and envied him the gain it brought him. He requited their flattery with generous entertainment, according to the fashion of his people. Unfortunately contact with the white man had changed this fashion for the worse. Indians of an earlier generation had entertained their friends with feasts of game and sweet potatoes; but the young braves of 1800 and thereabouts preferred rum, Se-Quo-Yah would buy a keg of rum, and with a party of companions, would retire into the woods to remain until the rum supply was exhausted and they had recovered from its effects. The work of the forge stood still; money was getting low in the pouch.
Through the efforts of his good friend, Mr. Lowrey, Se-Quo-Yah was aroused to a sense of his folly and degradation before it was too late to break away from his bad habits; he gave up his idle companions, resumed his work with renewed industry and spent his leisure time among the more sedate and intelligent men of his tribe.
Among the people in whose society he was now to be found, a frequent subject of discussion was the wonderful power possessed by the white man of making curious marks upon paper, which meant the same thing to every white man to whom they might be shown; unlike the Indian's picture-writing, which meant this or that, according to the interpretation put upon it. Some characterized it as sorcery; some reverently called it a gift of the Great Spirit to his favorite children; some believed it to be a mere trick, and with the object of detecting the fraud would show a written sentence to one white man after another, expecting some variation in the interpretation. Se-Quo-Yah alone pronounced it an art which might be practiced by all men, if they had only the ingenuity. He expressed the belief that he could "talk on paper," and in spite of the ridicule of his friends set to work to make good his assertion.
In the woods he gathered birch bark which he separated into thin sheets; on these, with dyes extracted from plants, he painted pictures, each one of which represented the name of some natural object. This process was very laborious and he abandoned it when he found that he had accumulated a number of characters greater than he could remember, while the vocabulary of the language still remained far from complete.
He now procured coarse paper and made a rough book, in which he began another series of experiments. At this point he had some assistance from a collection of "talking leaves," as the Indians called a printed page. An English spelling-book fell into his hands, but he could not read a word of it; he did not even know any English, but the "talking leaves" were covered all over with figures of distinct shape, such figures as he was taxing his ingenuity to invent. Some of them he copied and adopted in his work, where, however, they play a part quite unlike that with which we associate them in the English alphabet. For instance, among the eighty-six characters of the alphabet invented by Se-Quo-Yah, we recognize the forms of our W, H, B and other letters, but W stands for the sound la, and the others represent sounds just as far from their English equivalents.
After about two years' work Se-Quo-Yah had the satisfaction of seeing that he had really achieved the end for which he had labored so patiently. He had made a complete alphabet of the Cherokee language, an alphabet of which it may safely be affirmed that it is the most perfect in the world, since its characters represent exactly the sound for which they stand, unlike the letters of our English alphabet, which in many cases do not even suggest the sound of the word they spell. For example, a Cherokee who read the letters b-u-t would take for granted that he had spelled the word beauty; reading l-e-g, he would pronounce it elegy. The consequence of this is that when a Cherokee school boy has once mastered the alphabet he knows how to read without any further labor. There are no spelling lessons to learn. If he hears a word correctly pronounced he knows exactly what letters must be used to form it.
Having composed his alphabet, Se-Quo-Yah tested it by teaching it to his little daughter, six years old. To his joy, he found that as soon as she had become familiar with the characters she could form correctly any word he spoke.
It had taken him two years to perfect his method; it took him a longer time to convince his people of its value. During those years, his neglect of his forge and the chase, his idle dreaming over his "talking leaves," had aroused the ridicule and contempt of his neighbors and the head men of his tribe, and angered his wife, who resented finding her husband a lazy drone in place of the prosperous blacksmith she had married. The most kindly opinion expressed of him was that he was insane; even the children laughed at the madman and his "talking leaves." When he assured them that those "talking leaves" contained a secret of inestimable value to the Cherokee nation, they only laughed the more and passed on, shaking their heads and saying, "Poor old Se-Quo-Yah!"
With considerable difficulty he persuaded his old friend, Mr. Lowrey to come to his cabin and make a test of his discovery. Mr. Lowrey consented from mere good-nature, not expecting to learn anything of interest. Se-Quo-Yah asked him to dictate to him some words and sentences, which he wrote in his characters. He then called in his little daughter, who read without difficulty the sentences that she had not heard spoken. There was no possibility of doubting that here was a great discovery. Mr. Lowrey became Se-Quo-Yah's earnest helper in his efforts to gain recognition. But the obstacles in the way were hard to overcome. Prejudice against "white men's ways," distrust of a thing so contrary to the traditions of the tribe, fear of sorcery, all had to be met and conquered. At length the chiefs of the nation consented to a public test of Se-Quo-Yah's claims. A number of the most intelligent young men of the tribe were selected and placed under his tuition. The result confirmed in the minds of the more superstitious their belief in the magical nature of Se-Quo-Yah's characters. Some of the scholars learned the alphabet in three days and were then able to read anything that Se-Quo-Yah had written at the dictation of any of the judges. The triumph of the inventor was complete.