"My great grandma told my grandma, and she tells me. If I had
sense enough, I ought to listen to all she says. Sometimes I
play with my dolls and not pay attention."
"Sequoyah had a little girl; her name Nancy. This little girl
got sick—was sick two, three days and died. That’s only girl
Sequoyah had; he thought nothing like little girl. He had four
boys, you know (She had previously told me that his four sons
were Wagon Wheel and Lightening Bug who married Mexican girls
and went to Mexico, George, who was killed in Texas and Tessee,
her great grandfather). An ther’s another boy staying with them;
I don’t know his name. They told me time and again, but I forgot
it."
"One morning it had been raining all night. This morning he
got up. His wife named Sallie." He said, "Sallie, fix me some
sofka; me and the boy is going up on the mountain. He wouldn’t
eat, he just wouldn’t eat, Grieving, you know; so they walked
off after Sallie made sofka and went up on the mountain."
"This boy say about middle way up mountain, Sequoyah give
out. There was little stream of water about that deep (she
indicated about two feet deep), pretty blue water from mountain,
you know. There was a tree there and another tree here. They
laid down, this boy laid down on one side of the stream and
Sequoyah laid down on the other side, and this water was between
them. Sequoyah went off sleep like that, and that boy was awake;
he looking down at that water running down, you know."
"Well, after while a big ole white butterfly come up there
and went round and round Sequoyah’s head and after while he
light right here (she pointed to her chin). The boy kept looking
at that white butterfly. After while white butterfly got up and
went two, three more rounds and went back in that stream of
water – white butterfly."
Then Sequoyah wake up. He say, "Here son, you know, I found
my little girl that I lost." An he had that rock in his hand,
and that pencil – "See here what she brought me. She learned me
how to write the Cherokee language, and she told me to go
through the world and teach the Cherokee language to all my
great great grandchildren through the world, he told that little
boy – and he had that rock in his hand. Now we see his picture
with that rock in his hand, You know that’s the truth, and the
little girl was dead."
Well, when he went home, he said, "Look what she brought to
me. She learned me how to write the Cherokee language, and she
told me to go through the world and tell all my great great
grandchildren to write the Cherokee language."
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