Abraham Lincoln once asserted, “A man’s destiny stands not in the future But in the past”. This being the case, we have real indebtedness to our Cherokee Indian ancestors. Prior to the present decade, claiming one’s Indian descendancy has not been popular. However, a new wave of tolerance plus an appreciation of Indian contributions are gaining increasing momentum. It seems that as we learn of area Indians --- their beliefs and their lifestyles --- we also learn respect and acquire a desire for promulgation of the Indian culture. Five generations removed from the days of Cherokee occupancy in their homelands, North Alabamians are hungry for exposure to the history, literature, language, art, music, and crafts of their Cherokee ancestors. This is a good sign, for it speaks of a dying away of age-old prejudices, a lessening of ungrounded hatred, and a realization that our stereotypes of Indians as presented in the typical black and white westerns of yesteryear are grossly unjust. It’s a real lesson in humility for us to learn, for example, that Indians were friendly to invading whites initially; that the bulk of their fighting was generated in retaliation for injury or insult harshly hurled by unthoughtful or greedy acts of white men. Cherokee Indians were a special lot. Their culture was as advanced as their thinking, and that put them well ahead of their times. The Cherokee adapted the white man’s ways, partly out of recognition that these ways were better and partly out of a realization that adaptability would deter the complete annihilation of them and their culture. Sequoyah stands out as a Cherokee of prominence. Surely history has produced only a precious few with more intellect and patriotism than Sequoyah who in collaboration with no one else gave his people a written alphabet not out of personal ambition but out of a desire to unify his people