"Sikwayi does squaw work!"

  Thus the other Cherokee boys taunted the boy who helped his Indian mother around the trading post. Sequoyah went on with his work and gave no sign of being annoyed. He knew that so long as his white father was gone, his mother needed his help.

  Often he wished that he had more time to practice running. He wished that he had a father or a grandfather to teach him how to use a bow and arrows and to play the hoop game as well as some of his friends could.

  As he grew older, he began to realize that his talents lay in other directions. In time, he became such an excellent silversmith that other men tried to copy his work.

  Then it was that he decided to identify his work by stamping his English name on it. The name was Gist, but it sounded like Guess to the man who wrote it for Sequoyah. As a result, he used the name, George Guess.

  Sequoyah grew up in eastern Tennessee in the days when white men were trying to take over the Cherokees' land. In spite of his white blood, Sequoyah thought of himself as "all Cherokee" and shared the sorrows and tragedies of his Cherokee friends.

  In those days a Cherokee could not help living close to the white man. He could not help acquiring many of the white man's ways, and Sequoyah was no exception.

  Early in life he discovered the advantages of the white man's apples and cows and spring-houses. As a young man he discovered the almost magical power of the white man's "talking leaves"—those little pieces of paper covered with strange marks.

  The discovery that white men could communicate by written words as well as by spoken words decided the course of Sequoyah's life. He could not forget the magical talking leaves nor the power they gave. He was filled with an overwhelming determination to create an alphabet, or syllabary, for the language of the Cherokees. 

  So it came about that this "unlettered" Cherokee silversmith created alone a whole new system of writing. It was a feat never before accomplished—a feat that is not likely ever to be duplicated.

  Dorethea J. Snow has written a colorful, yet highly sympathetic, story of the lad whose adult life was devoted to a single purpose. Boys and girls alike will be enthusiastic about this dramatic story because it is both entertaining and enlightening.

From the dust jacket