Sequoyah
Sometimes the worlds of constructed and natural languages intersect. Many conlangers not only construct languages, but they also design writing systems and even fonts for their languages. David J. Peterson is a prime example of this level of creativity with scripts to accompany conlangs like Kamakawi. Trent Pehrson has a wonderful page of neographies here.
The image to the left is Sequoyah (c.1770-1843) and is taken from Thomas McKenney and James Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America. Sequoyah's native language, Cherokee (or Tsalagi), had no written script of its own when he encountered white settlers and trappers reading letters. Intrigued with the idea of being able to transmit messages accurately from one person to another, Sequoyah worked on a written language for his people. Eventually, his syllabary was adopted as the official writing of the nation in 1812.
A syllabary differs from an alphabet in that it represents a syllable rather than a single sound. In English, letters represent a, b, c, d, e, etc. In Cherokee, the writing represents sounds like ga, gi, ge, go, gu, etc.
Sequoyah's "talking leaves"s were used to print the first Native American newspaper, Cherokee Phoenix, in 1828.
A biography of Sequoyah, called "The American Cadmus", appeared in the newspaper in 1829.
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