Passage Three

　　Born around 1770 in Tennessee, Sequoyah was a Cherokee. Like otherNative Americans of that time, he could neither read nor write. He couldn'thelp noticing, though, how white people wrote to one another on sheets ofpaper. They often used these “talking leaves,” as some Native Americans calledthem, to communicate.

　　Back then, the Cherokee had no way to write down words in their ownlanguage. Sequoyah believed it was important for the Cherokee to have a systemof writing. So, in 1809, he set out to create an alphabet that the Cherokeecould use to do just that.

　　Sequoyah started by drawing pictures, with each one representing adifferent word or idea. He soon realized that writing sentences using pictureswould be much too difficult. There were too many words. No one would ever beable to remember that many pictures.

　　Sequoyah decided to try a different approach. He began to developsymbols to stand for the sounds, or syllables (音节), that made upwords. Twelve years later, he completed a system of writing with 86 differentsymbols. Each one stood for a different syllable in the Cherokee language. Thesymbols could easily be put together to form words. Soon thousands of Cherokeewere able to read and write in their own language.

　　Sequoyah's work did not end there, however. He helped to establish aprint shop and began publishing a bilingual newspaper in both Cherokee andEnglish. The shop also printed books translated from English into Cherokee. Inlater years, Sequoyah also became a political leader among the Cherokee.

As can be learned from the firstparagraph, a Cherokee was a________.

“Talking leaves” in the final paragraphrefers to________.

To create an alphabet, Sequoyah beganwith pictures that stand for________.

Sequoyah's invention was important tothe Cherokee, because________.

Sequoyah is best remembered for________.