Few American Indians were as impactful and important to their people and America as Sequoyah. Born in the late 1700s to a Cherokee mother and a German father in what is today eastern Tennessee, Sequoyah suffered a physical disability. This apparently pushed him in the direction of more academic pursuits.
He worked as a silversmith and, despite a debilitating limp, fought against other Indian tribes in more than one battle. But his true contribution to the world was made in the early 1800s. Sequoyah wanted to raise the living standard of the Cherokee people to that of the whites, and he knew that could only be accomplished through proper and formal education. But that would be difficult because most Cherokees at the time only spoke Cherokee and the Cherokee language had no written language.
So, Sequoyah created a syllabary/script for the Cherokee language.
Sequoyah’s efforts immediately bore fruit as the new script was used to produce Cherokee-language newspapers and Cherokee literacy rates skyrocketed. He immediately became a leader among his people and was actually quite respected throughout America in general. But the government’s policy of “Indian removal” meant that the Cherokees of the southeast would be uprooted and forced to move to Indian Territory (Oklahoma).
The Cherokees became a splintered nation. Most moved to Indian Territory/Oklahoma, but a small number were allowed to stay in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Others decided to try their luck in the wild country of the borderland between Texas and Mexico.
In 1842, Sequoyah and a small group of his closest friends and family members set out to find the lost Cherokees in Mexico, which is where the mystery of his life begins, and ends.
Sequoyah and his band traveled among indigenous groups in northern Mexico and even taught some of them Cherokee, but they never found any of the lost Cherokee bands. Those in Sequoyah’s group claimed that he died in August of 1843, but they gave few details and none concerning his manner of death.
The official record says that Sequoyah died in 1843 in the town of San Fernando (now Zaragoza), Tamaulipas, Mexico. There is no evidence to suggest that he died from violence and, since he was relatively old at the time, most scholars believe he died of natural causes. But within a few years of Sequoyah’s supposed death, alternative theories began circulating.
Many believe that Sequoyah lived years past 1843—some say 1845, while others place his death sometime in the 1850s. Questions over Sequoyah’s death and possible resting place led the Cherokee Nation to fund an expedition to locate the leader’s grave in 1939, but the findings were inconclusive. It was then revealed in 2011 that Sequoyah was buried in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma. According to this theory, two men discovered the skeletal remains of a man in a cave who had a crippled leg and was buried with a long-stemmed pipe.
The physical characteristics sound like Sequoyah, but the remains were never disinterred and their current location remains a mystery. There is also the question of why Sequoyah’s remains would be in Oklahoma when he was traveling through northern Mexico when he died?
Well, the alternate theories hold that once Sequoyah realized that there were no lost bands of Cherokees living in the wilds of northern Mexico, he decided to go back home to Indian Territory/Oklahoma to live out his last days. Unfortunately, he died just before making it home and was buried in a cave.
As it now stands, it looks like the date of Sequoyah’s death and his final resting place will forever remain one of history’s mysteries.