"Sequoyah"

Thou Cadmus of thy race!
Thou giant of thy age!
In every heart a place,
In history a living page;
The juggernaut chariot time,
May crush as she doth give;
But a noble name like thine,
Shall ever with Kee-too-whah live.

Orion-like thou dost stand,
In any age and clime,
With intellect as grand,
As ever shown by time,
'Twas thy hand lit the spark
That heavenward flashed its ray
Revealing the shining mark
The straight and narrow way.

Ignorance and superstitious awe
From high pedestals toppled o'er
When as the ancient giver of law,
Smiting, thou mad'st the waters pour;
Stand thou didst on Pisgah's height,
And gazed into the future deep.
But day was ne'er unclasped from night
E'er thy spirit silently fell asleep.

This rather strange poem, an ode to Sequoyah by David J. Brown, was first published in the tribal newspaper, "The Cherokee Advocate" exactly 128 years ago today, on February 26, 1879. The style of writing reflects the poet's background in classical literature. In the poem, Sequoyah is compared to Cadmus of Thebes, the mythological inventor of the Greek alphabet.

Most of David J. Brown's poetry was about the Tsalagi but as far as I could find, this is his only surviving verse. He was born in 1856 and graduated from the Cherokee Male Seminary* in 1878. The following year, he was shot down in the street in Muskogee, Creek Nation. He was hailed as "one of the most promising young men of the country" before his tragic death. He is buried in the Cherokee National Cemetary, Fort Gibson, Oklahoma.

(*Now called Northeastern State University in Tahlequah Oklahoma, a Male Seminary and Female Seminary was founded in the mid 1800s by order of the Cherokee National Council. This was the first nonsectarian secondary school west of the Mississippi River. The National Council wanted to provide students with a higher education, expose them to white values and lifestyles, and boost the local Cherokee economy.)