Sequoyah (also called George Guess or George Gist), the half-Cherokee Indian who developed the Cherokee syllabary from 1809 to 1821, began by trying to devise a logographic alphabet (one graphic symbol for one word), though that eventually proved to be too unwieldy. He next determined to create characters for each syllable. This he did, producing a handwritten system with little inspiration from English. Ultimately, his syllabary included 86 symbols. 

The Cherokee Phoenix (Tsalagi Tsulehisanvhi), the Cherokee Nation’s first official newspaper, appeared on February 21, 1828. Printed with English and Cherokee side-by-side, it was the first North American Indian newspaper to be published in an indigenous language, as well as the first North American bilingual newspaper. When the Cherokee Nation first purchased a printing press, some of Sequoyah’s written characters were replaced by analogues from the Roman (Latin) alphabet or were created out of modified Roman letters for purposes of clarity, design, and aesthetics. That modified adaptation of the original script eventually replaced the original, and it became the primary writing system used by native Cherokee speakers.