"They told how his health began to improve, and they had great hopes of his recovery, until after passing Grand River. Then they found only bad water; and his health failed again; the provisions became scarce, and they depended entirely on game. It seemed that there was nothing for them. One of the men always stayed with Se-Quo-Yah, until at last he sent them all to hunt. They remained over night, and on their return to the place next day where they had left him, he was gone, but had left directions for them to follow him to another place which he described.
"They hurried on, but found him dead. They put his papers with his body and wrapped it with blankets and placed it away, upon a kind of shelf, in a small cave, where nothing could disturb it. They said they marked the place so they could find it, but the men sent to bring the body failed to find the place."
In the Council House of Tahlequah is a marble bust of Se-Quo-Yah, showing him a man of mild and thoughtful countenance. His true monument is the literature of his nation; the memory of his great achievement is perpetuated in the name of those giant trees that tower above the Western forests as he over topped other men of his tribe.
Shortly after the knowledge of Se-Quo-Yah's system became general among his people, Col. Thomas L. McKenney made a report to the War Department on the condition of the Cherokee Nation, in which he says: "The success which has attended the philological researches of one of the nation, whose system of education has met with universal approbation among the Cherokees, certainly entitles him to great consideration and to rank with the benefactors of men. His name is Guess and he is a native and unlettered Cherokee; but, like Cadmus, he has given to his people the alphabet of their language."
IX. JOHN JAYBIRD, THE INDIAN RELIC-MAKER, AND THE CITY DUDE.
A remnant of the Cherokees remained in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, after the most of the tribe removed to Indian Territory. Among these was a young man named John Jaybird, known among both whites and Indians as "the Indian relic-maker." His chief employment is carving the images of men and animals in a kind of soft stone found near the Little Tennessee River, of western North Carolina. With no other implement than a pocket-knife he can carve an exact image of any animal he has ever seen, or of which he has ever seen a picture. For these curiosities, or "Indian relics," as he calls them, he finds a profitable sale among the whites. He lived on the banks of the Little Tennessee River, and when not carving was fishing.
E. E. White, the special Indian agent, tells the following amusing story in which this young Cherokee figured. He said "A dude came out from the city to visit Mr. Siler, a prominent young lawyer of Charleston, North Carolina. He professed to be fond of fishing, and from the first manifested great impatience to embark in that delightful pastime. He was very loud, and so extremely blustering and energetic that Mr. Siler's village friends stood off and looked on in amazement, and sometimes in great amusement also. But Mr. Siler was courteous and obliging and not disposed to be critical. Nevertheless it was whispered about among his home friends that at heart he would be glad enough to get the dude off in the woods out of sight. At all events, he said, the dude should fish as much as he wished.
"Equipped with bait and tackle they betook themselves to the river. To the dude's evident astonishment the fish refused to come out on the bank and suffer him to kill them with a club, and he shifted about too much to give them a chance at his hook. He could always see a better place somewhere else. He soon began to manifest disappointment in the fish and disgust for the country, and intimated that the people were shamefully deficient in enterprise and style, and in no respect what they should be. Rambling on down the river, the dude leading and Siler following—they came in sight of Jaybird, who was also fishing. Sitting motionless on a rock, with his gaze fixed on the cork on his line, he seemed the counterpart of 'the lone fisherman.'
"By Jove! Yonder's an Indian," said the dude; "let's make him get away and let us have that place." "Oh, no," replied Siler; "that's John Jaybird, one of the best fellows in the world. Let's not bother him."