December 27, 1980

The U.S. Postal Service honored Cherokee leader Sequoyah by issuing a 19-cent stamp in his likeness as the premier stamp in its new Great American Series. The Tuskegee-born silversmith and veteran of the Creek War of 1813-14, Sequoyah is best known for inventing an 86-character syllabary of the Cherokee language that made it possible to read and write. In 1839, he served as president of the western Cherokee and reunited the group with the eastern Cherokee through an Act of Union following the latter groups removal to Indian Territory. Today, Sequoyah is memorialized in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall, representing Oklahoma, and through the giant sequoia redwood trees named in his honor.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Statue of Sequoyah at the National Statuary Hall Collection, Washington, D.C. (The Architect of the Capitol, Wikipedia)

Front page of the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper, May 21, 1828. (Cherokee Phoenix, Wikipedia)

Reproduction of Sequoyah’s log cabin, now a Native American museum in Sequoyah County, Oklahoma. The original, located inside an adjacent protective building, is on the National Register of Historic Places. (Tonya Stinson, Wikipedia)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.