Setangya, aka: Satank, Sitting Bear (1810?-1871) - Setangya was a noted Kiowa chief, medicine man, and leader of the Kiowa honor society called "Koitsenk", or the "Ten Bravest Warriors." He was born in the Black Hills region about 1810. He became prominent at an early age, and is credited with having been a principal agent in negotiating the final peace between the Kiowa and the Cheyenne about 1840. His name heads the list of signers of the noted Medicine Lodge treaty of 1867, though he signed it with reluctance. When placed on the Fort Sill, Oklahoma reservation, he soon began resisting authority. In 1870 his son was killed by the white men during a revenge raid in Texas and he soon began to lead  attacks settlers himself. On May 17, 1871, in company with Satanta and Big Tree, he led the Warren Wagon Train Raid in Texas, in which 7 white men lost their lives. After making public boasts of the deed to the agent at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, he, Satanta and Big Tree were arrested by military authority to be sent to Texas for trial. Setangya, however, refused to be a prisoner, and deliberately inviting death, wrenched the fetters from his wrists, drew a concealed knife, and sprang upon a guard. He was shot to death by other troops and was buried in the military cemetery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Sequoya, aka George Guess (1767?-1843) - Inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, Sequoya was born in Taskigi, Tennessee about 1760. He was the son of a white man and a Cherokee woman of mixed blood, daughter of a chief in Echota. Besides his native name of Sikwayi, or Sequoya, he was known as George Gist, otherwise spelled Guest or Guess, the last name of his father, generally believed to have been a German trader. He has also been claimed as the son of Nathaniel Gist of Revolutionary note. Sequoya grew up in the tribe, quite unacquainted with English or civilized arts and became a hunter and trader in furs. He was also a craftsman in silverwork and a natural mechanic. In an early hunting accident, he became crippled for life.

The importance of the arts of writing and printing as instruments and weapons of civilization began to impress him in 1809, and he studied, undismayed by the discouragement and ridicule of his fellows, to elaborate a system of writing suitable to the Cherokee language. In 1821 he submitted his syllabary to the chief men of the nation, and on their approval the Cherokee of all ages set about to learn it with such zeal that after a few months thousands were able to read and write their language. Sequoya, in 1822, visited Arkansas to introduce writing in the Western division of the Cherokee, among whom he took up his permanent abode in 1823. Parts of the Bible were printed in Cherokee in 1824, and in 1828 the Cherokee Phoenix, a weekly newspaper in Cherokee and English, began to appear. Sequoya was sent to Washington in 1828 as an envoy of the Arkansas band and when the Eastern Cherokee joined the old settlers in the west, his influence was significant.

In his declining years, he withdrew from active political life, but visited tribes of various stocks in a fruitless search for the elements of a common speech and grammar. He sought also to trace a lost band of the Cherokee that, according to tradition, had crossed the Mississippi before the Revolution and wandered to some mountains in the west, and while pursuing this quest in the Mexican sierras he met his death. Sequoya died near San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico, in August, 1843.

Chief Tecumseh (1768-1813) - Tecumseh's given name was actually Tecumtha or Tekamthi, meaning Celestial Panther Lying in Wait. Born in 1768 at the Shawnee village of Piqua on the Mad River, about southwest of the present day city of Springfield, Ohio, Tecumseh he grew up to be highly skilled warrior, orator, and statesman who advocated "civilized’ resistance."  His father, who was also a chief,  was killed at the Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774. Tecumseh and his followers believed that their lands belonged to all the tribes in common and denied the right of the Government to make land purchases from any single tribe. The government refused to recognize this principle, and in

1795, Tecumseh refused to sign the Treaty of Greenville, which ceded much of present-day Ohio to American settlers. He then began to form a confederacy of tribes for the purpose of holding the Ohio river as the permanent boundary between the the white settlers and the Indians.

In 1808, he and his brother, Tenskwatawa, who was known as the "Prophet," established a "headquarters" for the confederacy on the banks of the Tippecanoe River, the site of present-day Prophet's Town, Indiana. On November 7, 1811, while Tecumseh was away, the alliance suffered a setback when Indiana Territory Governor William Henry Harrison attacked and defeated the "Prophet" and his men at Tippecanoe. But Tecumseh persisted, and when the War of 1812 erupted, he led his forces to the support of the British, and was rewarded with a regular commission as brigadier general, having under his command some 2,000 warriors of the allied tribes. He was killed in the Battle of the Thames on October 5, 1813.

© Kathy Weiser/Legends of America, updated January, 2010.