Excerpt from "The Chickasaw nation : a short sketch of a noble people (1922)"  by James H. Malone  (Sequoyah - page 358)
California Digital Library

George Gist, Father of Sequoyah


About 1739 there came from Bavaria to Ebenezer a family of Swabia, Franconia ancestry, very different in character from the first settlers, being influenced by the hope of gain and having no religious aspirations. To this family was born a boy named George Gist; who grew up in ignorance, could speak only a few words in English or Cherokee, and was noted only for his cunning, lazy, and shiftless disposition, so that he could not procure a peddler's license, in lieu of which he became an illicit Indian trader. This boy was destined to become the father of the most illustrious North American Indian, the intellectual peer of the wisest men in the history of mankind....

The Cherokees had marked out a path from Augusta, Georgia, to their country, over which horsemen could ride to all parts of the Cherokee country. George Gist is said to have taken this path for the Cherokee country, with two pack horses laden with merchandise suitable for trade with the Indians.