Sequoya might have been one of the great warriors of the Cherokee nation but the world has reason to be glad that he was lamed fighting with Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in the Tennessee River country. His lameness gave Sequoya leisure to work out his dream of a written language for the Cherokees, the creation of which is one of the great feats of American scholarship. Sequoya always claimed he could not have have done his work alone, without his daughter, Oquana. How she helped is told—and beautifully told—in this unusual story laid in the 1820's, in the days when Alabama and Arkansas were frontier country.

"I read this book straight through and with mountain interest. Sequoya's achievement in devising a syllabary and thus creating a written language for the Cherokees was truly remarkable, and Frances Browin has here recorded it in simple and absorbing fashion. Captured Words should hold the interest of every child from ten to fourteen, who will read anything at all. Girls and boys in the old "Cherokee" country of Alabama and Arkansas will feel that it is their book."

-Emily Miller Denton

Director, Birmingham (Al.)

Public Library (retired)

From the dust jacket