And now I have no doubt. What we have begun will not end here. Instead, like a stone dropped into still waters, its ripples will spread far and wide. And when people see the power of my father’s creation and begin to learn to use my father’s syllabary, they will then teach others.

There is an old saying that the ice of winter never leaves all at once. It takes time for the thaw to happen. But when it does, nothing can stop the spring and summer from returning.

I stand between my father and my sister. My friend Yugi is close behind me with his hand on my shoulder. And I am smiling. I have found the path for my life. I no longer wonder what I can do, what I can make. I will help teach my people how to read and write our beautiful language. I will help bring our people closer together with Sequoyah’s talking leaves. I will help our people stay strong, even in the face of the white men’s might.

I will help bring our Tsalagi people that warmth of the sun.

Afterword

Born somewhere between 1760 and 1780 in the Cherokee town of Tuskegee in present-day Tennessee, the Cherokee man known as Sequoyah was a true genius. In the words of one of his biographers, Grant Foreman, he was “the only man in history to conceive and perfect in its entirety an alphabet or a syllabary.”

One of the amazing things about Sequoyah’s invention is that it was so based in the actual sounds of their language that it was easy for Cherokee people to learn to read and write it. Within a few months, Cherokee people who had been totally illiterate were able to read and write using the syllabary. People of all ages were soon using the language to communicate with one another. When the Cherokee Nation began to publish its own newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, it was printed in both English and the Cherokee syllabary. It was a major unifying force and a source of great pride to all the Cherokees.

Sequoyah himself returned to Arkansas and eventually became one of the principal leaders of the western Cherokees. Beloved and respected by everyone, it was Sequoyah who worked to bring together the western Cherokees and their eastern relatives after the Trail of Tears when nearly all of the remaining Cherokees in the American South were forcibly removed to part of the Indian Territory that became Oklahoma. The Cherokee Trail of Tears took place in the winter of 1838–1839. By then Sequoyah himself was living in the West. However, during that terrible journey Sequoyah’s son Tessee (or Jesse), on whom Uwohali, my main character in this novel is partially based, was one of the principal interpreters.