The 26-letter alphabet we use is not American, but English. It is a “Made in Britain” import, brought to Plymouth Rock and Jamestown in the 17th century. Noah Webster made it our official alphabet through his spellers, grammars, and dictionaries in the 19th century.

There was at least one purely American alphabet, developed by Native Americans. The great Cherokee, Sequoyah, from about 1809 to 1821, worked out an 86-letter alphabet for the Cherokee language. The Cherokees lived in the Smoky Mountain regions of eastern Tennessee, northern Georgia, western Carolinas, and southeastern Kentucky. One small group of volunteers, including Sequoyah, migrated to the Arkansas territory around 1818, but the majority remained behind until forced to move in 1836-38. The story of that saga, including the Indian exodus on the “trail of tears,” is a moving chapter in American history − both literally and figuratively “moving.”

What is seldom considered about that resettlement of an entire nation is that Sequoyah’s alphabet, designed to educate Indians to live at peace with white men and to be absorbed into the nation’s citizens, may have precipitated the forced moving.

The predominant Indian policy in America throughout the first six presidents was that of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, basing his theory on his broader ideas about the ability of people to be educated and to live together, believed that most Indians could be changed by education into farmers and ordinary citizens. Most religious organizations believed the same thing, and mission schools to teach English, religion, and agricultural techniques sprang up among those Indian tribes everywhere in the territories closest to the populated Eastern Seaboard.

American Indian practice, however, differed considerably from official policy. Even Jefferson sometimes despaired of his ideals. Faced with continuing warfare with the Creeks and Chickasaws, he suggested that U.S. trading posts encourage Indians to run up debts so that they would have to give up their lands to pay the debts and move west. Gradually policy shifted from absorbing the Indians to transplanting them west of the Mississippi, and Andrew Jackson, with his experience in doing just that to the Creeks and Cherokees and Seminoles, made the policy official during his presidency.

The Cherokees, however, presented a peculiar problem. They were a large and peaceful tribe, eager to learn the white man’s ways and to become a part of the nation. After the Revolutionary War, they showed remarkable ability to adapt. They kept the peace and kept careful legal records of land claims and treaties, and despite the loss of half their land in 1818 under John Calhoun’s treaty with them, they seemed able to stay in their native habitat on firm legal ground. White westward migration was at its first peak, and the arrangement was an obstacle to the tide of settlers moving that direction.

Sequoyah, seeking to hasten the absorption of the Indians into the American nation, carried his alphabet back to the Cherokees in 1822, and it was quickly approved by the councils. It spread like wildfire, and soon hosts of Cherokees could read and write their own language, for the first time.

Printing presses using the Cherokee alphabet churned out newspapers, books, New Testaments, and practical manuals. Seldom in history has such widespread education occurred so rapidly. Within five years of the alphabet’s acceptance, communication and learning ran rampant among the Indians. The Brainerd Mission served as a model community schooling effort for the Cherokees.

But then the Cherokees made their fatal error. At the end of the 1820s, they wrote a constitution for their nation, copied from the U. S. Constitution. A number of states had done the same thing, before being admitted to statehood, and the Cherokees were merely following the accepted path towards statehood.

Jackson agreed with the state of Georgia that this act was unconstitutional and that no new state could be carved out of an existing one. He advised the Indians to move west, and then got Congress to pass the Removal Act of 1830.

The Jefferson policy had lasted a half-century. Jackson’s policy would last another fifty years. The one Indian tribe most ready to be citizens under the old Jefferson policy was one of the first to be moved out under the new Jackson policy. The ejection of the Cherokees would have happened anyway, but it probably happened faster than it would have because of Sequoyah’s alphabet, which was designed to prevent the Indians from ever having to move at all.

Larry McGehee, Wofford College professor-emeritus, may be reached by e-mail at mcgeheelt@wofford.edu mailto:mcgeheeelt@wofford.edu.

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