Sequoyah and the Cherokee Alphabet

By the 1770s, the European colonists had settled along America's eastern seaboard, and begun to move west, into land still held by Indians. The Cherokee Indians were told to either give up their traditional ways of life and adopt the ways of the white people, or give up their land and make way for the settlers. But Sequoyah, a lame Cherokee craftsman, saw a way for his people to live among the whites, but still keep their Indian culture.