The American Indian Quarterly

"They say that Sequoyah has gone crazy," one man said. "He's practically abandoned his wife and children."

"He spends all his time in that little cabin he made in the woods. All alone. And what does he do there? He makes strange marks on paper," said another.

"They must be conjuring marks," said a third. "He's a witch, and he'll be using those marks and other things against us."

"Are you sure they're conjuring marks?"

"Of course. What else could they be? They're not pictures of anything."

"Someone said that he thinks he can write our language."

"That's crazy."

"Well, whatever the truth may be, someone should make him stop that craziness."

In most versions of the historical story of Sequoyah, including that of Keetoowah novelist Robert Conley, when the crippled silversmith first began the development of the Cherokee syllabary in the hope of providing a way for Cherokees to transmit their language and ideas, his wife and neighbors were so alarmed by his odd behavior that they burned all of his materials, certain that his "conjuring marks" were a sign of evil activity.¹ In some accounts Sequoyah did not so much create the syllabary as reveal an ancient and powerful system of writing that had belonged to the People in the ancient times. Either way, his dedication to providing a [End Page 3] powerful tool for Cherokee continuity was more enduring than his neighbors' reactionary fear, and the syllabary survived, quickly becoming an invaluable resource in the expression and maintenance of Cherokee nationhood during a time of overwhelming oppression from the governments of the state of Georgia and the United States.

Sequoyah's work was rooted in the values and history of the People, and he understood that the content, form, and purpose of words matter. His aim was worthy; the syllabary's revelation and subsequent transmission were oriented to Cherokee concerns—indeed, he took a direct hand in teaching the syllabary to Cherokees in the old homelands of the Southeast and those who had emigrated to Indian Territory and Mexico, and as a result he helped to link the geographically distant communities through correspondence and the power of the written word. Because they reflected Sequoyah's mindful respect for the past, present, and future of the People, these "conjuring marks" became a widespread and powerful expressive medium of Cherokee empowerment. The syllabary closed the gap across time and space, and Cherokee nationhood was strengthened.

The Power of Words

Native peoples in North America have a long and often vexed relationship with the unpredictable power of the written word. Those marks on paper, hide, bark, and canvas have served as both tools of liberation for Indigenous communities and as weapons of devastation used against them. Indigenous peoples were literate in their own systems of meaning long before Eurowestern colonization, but European-derived languages and their various forms of transmission (often forced or coerced) created a very different relationship to literacy, one which was formative to the Christianizing and "civilizing" processes of Eurowestern colonization. It was literature that helped energize Cotton Mather's genocide-inciting sermons against Indian nations; literature justified the brutal boarding and residential school systems in the United States and Canada, and it still functions in their continuing legacies of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse; literature has helped to disfigure the minds of generations of people throughout the world in pulp novels, film scripts, song lyrics, comic books, government documents, television shows, music performances, museum exhibits, and scholarly monographs by representing [End Page 4] Natives as commodities and historical artifacts, playthings or annoyances to be used, discarded, and ultimately erased from the memory of our wounded world. This is powerful witchery—the use of "conjuring...