siooNEY] THE CnK.K()KP:E PHCENIX 111 



the Nation.' In Septem})er. 1825, David Brown, a prominent lialf- 

 l>rced ijn^aclicr. who had already iniuh' some attinnpt at translation in 

 the Roman alphabet, completed a translation of the New 'IVstamenl in 

 the new SA'lhibary. the work being handed about in manuscript, as 

 there W(>r(> as yet no types east in the Seipioya characters.-' In the same 

 month he forwarded to Thomas AlcKenney, chief of the Bureau of 

 Indian Affairs at Washinoton, a manuscript table of the chai-acters. 

 with explanation, this beiiii;- prolialdy its first introduction to ofticial 

 notice.^ 



In 1827 the Cherokee council haviiif;- formally resolved to establish 

 a national paper in the Cherokee lanjiiiag'e and characters, types for 

 that purpose were cast in Boston, under the supervision of the noted 

 missionarj', Worcester, of the American Board of Commissioners for 

 Foreign Missions, who. in Deceml)er of that year contributed to the 

 Mitisionanj Herald five verses of Genesis in the neM' syllabary, this 

 seeming to be its first appearance in print. Early in the next year 

 the press and types arrived at New Echota, and the first luunber of 

 the new paper, Txit'lCufi TKu'lehlxuttun'hl^thQ C7ie/'iAee P/ia'H/',i; -pviuted 

 in both languages, appeared on February 21, 1828. The first printers 

 were two white men. Isaac N. Harris and John F. Wheeler, with 

 John Cand}', a half-blood apprentice. Elias Boudiuot (Giilagi'na, "The 

 Buck"), an educated Ch(>rokee, was the editor, and Reverend S. A. 

 Worcester was the guiding spirit who brought order out of chaos and set 

 the work in motion. The office was a log house. The hand press and 

 types, after having been shipped by water from Boston, were trans- 

 ported two hundred miles by wagon from Augusta to their destination. 

 The printing paper had been overlooked and had to be brought Ijy the 

 same tedious process from Knoxville. Cases and other equii)ments 

 had to be devised and fashioned by the printers, neither of whom 

 understood a word of Cherokee, but simply set up the characters, as 

 handed to them in manuscript by Worcester and the editor. .Such was 

 the beginning of journalism in the Cherokee nation. After a precari- 

 ous existence of about six years the Phaniix was suspended, owing to 

 the hostile action of the Georgia authorities, who went so far as to 

 throw Worcester and Wheeler into prison. Its successor, after the 

 removal of the Cherokee to the West, was the Clierohee Adrorafi. of 

 which the first num})or appeared at Tahlcquah in 1844, with AVilliam 

 P. Ross as editor. It is still continued under the auspices of the 

 Nation, printed in both languages and distributed free at the expense 

 of the Nation to those unable to read English — an example without 

 parallel in any other government. 



In addition to numerous Bible translations, hymn books, and other 



• Foster, Sequoyah, pp. 120, 121, 1885. '■ Pilling, Iroquoian Bibliography, p. 'il, 1888. 



^Broun ktttr (unsigncfl), in Ameriain State Papers: Indian Affairs, ii, p. (»2, 18S4. 



