Sequoyah's Cabin Museum

Sequoyah's Cabin near Sallisaw preserves the home associated with Sequoyah, the Cherokee scholar who created the Cherokee syllabary. His writing system allowed Cherokee speakers to read and write their language with extraordinary speed after its introduction in the early nineteenth century. The syllabary transformed communication within the Cherokee Nation. It supported newspapers, correspondence, government records and education and contributed to remarkably high literacy rates among Cherokee citizens. Sequoyah later moved west, and the cabin site in Oklahoma connects his life with the period before and after the forced removal of most Cherokee people from the Southeast. The preserved structure and museum exhibits give visitors a physical link to a person whose intellectual achievement had global significance. The site works especially well with museums in Tahlequah because the syllabary appears throughout Cherokee governmental and cultural history. Understanding Sequoyah's work makes it easier to appreciate how the Cherokee Nation maintained language, political institutions and written communication through one of the most disruptive periods in its history.