Of George Gist's married life we have little recorded. It was of
very short duration. He converted his merchandise into furs, and
did not make more than one or two trips. With him it had merely
been cheap protection and board. We might denounce him as a low
adventurer if we did not remember that he was the father of one of
the most remarkable men who ever appeared on the continent. Long
before that son was born he gathered together his effects, went
the way of all peddlers, and never was heard of more.

He left behind him in the Cherokee Nation a woman of no common
energy, who through a long life was true to him she still believed
to be her husband. The deserted mother called her babe "Se-quo-
yah," in the poetical language of her race. His fellow-clansmen as
he grew up gave him, as an English one, the name of his father, or
something sounding like it. No truer mother ever lived and cared
for her child. She reared him with the most watchful tenderness.
With her own hands she cleared a little field and cultivated it,
and carried her babe while she drove up her cows and milked them.

His early boyhood was laid in the troublous times of the war of
the Revolution, yet its havoc cast no deeper shadows in the
widow's cabin.

As he grew older he showed a different temper from most Indian
children. He lived alone with his mother, and had no old man to
teach him the use of the bow, or indoctrinate him in the religion
and morals of an ancient but perishing people. He would wander
alone in the forest, and showed an early mechanical genius in
carving with his knife many objects from pieces of wood. He