The superintendent reported that the children
were apt to learn, willing to labor, and readily submissive to discipline,
adding- that the Cherokee were fast advancing toward civilized life and
generally manifested an ardent desire for instruction. The Valley-
towns mission, established at the instance of Currab.ee Dick, a promi-
nent local mixed-blood chief, was in charge of the Reverend Evan
Jones, known as the translator of the New Testament into the Cherokee
language, his assistant being James D. Watford, a mixed-blood pupil,
who compiled a spelling book in the same language. Reverend S. A.
Worcester, a prolific translator and the compiler of the Cherokee
almanac and other works, was stationed at Brainerd, removing thence
to New Echota and afterward to the Cherokee Nation in the West. 1
Since 1817 the American Board had also supported at Cornwall, Con-
necticut, an Indianschool at which a number of young Cherokee were
being educated, among them being Elias Boudinot, afterward the
editor of the Cherokee Phcenix.
About this time occurred an event which at once placed the Cherokee
in the front rank among native tribes and was destined to have profound
influence on their whole future history, viz., the invention of the
alphabet.
The inventor, aptly called the Cadmus of his race, was a mixed-
blood known among his own people as Sikwa'yi (Sequoya) and
among the whites as George Gist, or less correctly Guest or Guess.
As is usually the case in Indian biography much uncertainty exists in
regard to his parentage and early life. Authorities generally agree
that his father was a white man, who drifted into the Cherokee Nation
some years before the Revolution and formed a temporary alliance
with a Cherokee