just outside of old
Fort Loudon. It is quite possible that his white father may have been
a soldier of the garrison, one of those lovers for whom the Cherokee
women risked their lives during the siege. 3 What became of the
father is not known, but the mother lived alone with her son.
The only incident of his boyhood that has come down to us is his
presence at Echota during the visit of the Iroquois peace delegation,
about the year 17Ty.' His early years were spent amid the stormy
alarms of the Revolution, and as he grew to manhood he devel-
oped a considerable mechanical ingenuity, especially in .silver work-
ing. Like most of his tribe he was also a hunter and fur trader.
Having nearly reached middle age before the first mission was estab-
lished in theand within a few months thousands of hitherto illiterate Chero-
kee were able to read and write their own language, teaching each
other in the cabins and along the roadside. The next year Sequoya
visited the West, to introduce the new science among those who had
emigrated to the Arkansas. In the next year, 1823, he again visited
the Arkansas and took up his permanent abode with the western band,
never afterward returning to his eastern kinsmen. In the autumn of
the same year the Cherokee national council made public acknowledg-
ment of his merit by sending to him, through John Ross, then presi-
dent of the national committee, a silver medal with a commemorative
inscription in both languages. 1 In 1828 he visited AVashington as one
of the delegates from the Arkansas band, attracting much attention,
and the treaty