Portrait of Sequoyah by Henry Inman

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents “Face-to-Face,” a portrait talk about a selected portrait on view in the gallery. Francis Flavin, historian at the U.S. Department of the Interior, discussed this portrait of Sequoyah by artist Henry Inman. You can see this portrait in the “American Origins” exhibition on the first floor.

Sequoyah, the son of a Cherokee chief's daughter and a fur trader from Virginia, was a warrior and hunter and, some say, a silversmith. For twelve years he worked to devise a method of writing for the Cherokee language. His syllabary of eighty-five symbols, representing vowel and consonant sounds, was approved by the Cherokee chiefs in 1821, and the simple utilitarian system made possible a rapid spread of literacy throughout the Cherokee nation. Medicine men set down ceremonies for healing, divination, war, and traditional ball games; missionaries translated hymns and the New Testament into the native language; and in 1828 the Cherokee Phoenix, a weekly bilingual newspaper, began publication at New Echota, Georgia.

The original portrait of Sequoyah, painted by Charles Bird King, was destroyed by the fire that swept through the Smithsonian Castle building in January 1865.

Listen to Francis Flavin’s Face-to-Face talk on Sequoyah (23:17)

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is tonight (Thursday, December 4), when NPG researcher Warren Perry speaks about Franklin D. Roosevelt and the seventy-fifth anniversary of prohibition’s repeal. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.