The Last Days of
Sequoyah
Where the mortal remains of
Sequoyah rest, no man knows,
though it is generally
conceded that he died amid the towering
peaks of the Rocky Mountain
ranges. His ancient ancestors
occupied the loftiest peaks of
the Appalachian Mountains, and
as intellectually he towered
far above the average man, it seems
fitting that he should have
sought the lofty ranges of the West,
after his people had been
driven from their homes in the East,
to breathe his last, and yield
up his spirit to "The Beloved One
who dwelleth in the blue sky."
This short sketch will not
admit of the various versions as to
the circumstances attending
the last days of Sequoyah, much less
the speculations as to where
his body now sleeps; but in reference
to his later years this much
may be said:
In 1823 he took up his
permanent residence in Arkansas,
where a portion of the tribe
had been removed. He took a
prominent part in the treaties
by which the Cherokees, or the
most of them, were moved from
their homes in North Carolina
to the West.
In his declining years
Sequoyah withdrew from activities
among the Cherokees, and once
again gave himself over to
speculative ideas. He
conceived the idea that there should be
elements of a common speech
and grammar among the various
Indian languages, and he
traveled far and near among many
tribes in a vain endeavor to
demonstrate the correctness of his
theory. There was a current
tradition to the effect that in
ancient times a band of
Cherokees, forsaking their mountain
home and kindred in the
Appalachian range, had crossed the
Mississippi River and found
another home in a distant range of
mountains in the West.
Excerpt from the
book: The Chickasaw Nation: A Short Sketch of a Noble People
By James Henry Malone
1922
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