The Cherokee Nation
After the white man came, the Cherokees copied many of their ways. One Cherokee named Sequoyah saw how important reading and writing was to the white man. He decided to invent a way to write down the spoken Cherokee language. He began by making word pictures. For each word he drew a picture. But that proved impossible-there were just too many words. Then he took the 85 sounds that made up the language. Using this own imagination and an English spelling book, Sequoyah invented a sign for each sound. His alphabet proved amazingly easy to learn. Before long, many Cherokees knew how to read and write in their own language. By 1828, they were even printing their own newspaper.
The army was sent to drive the Cherokees out. Soldiers surrounded their villages and marched them at gunpoint into the western territory. The sick, the old and the small children went in carts, along with their belongings. The rest of the people marched on foot or rode on horseback. It was November, yet many of them still wore their summer clothes. Cold and hungry, the Cherokees were quickly exhausted by the hardships of the journey. Many dropped dead and were buried by the roadside. When the last group arrived in their new home in March 1839, more than 4,000 had died. It was indeed a march of death.
A) on the American continent.
C) Beyond the Mississippi River.
2. one of the ways that Sequoyah copied from the white man is the way of
B) Making word pictures.
D) Printing their own newspaper.
A) allow the Cherokees to stay where they were.
C) Force the Cherokees to move westward.
4. When the Cherokees began to leave their lands.
B) They went on horseback.
D) All of the above.
A) they were not willing to go there.
C) They did not have enough food and clothes.
KEY: BACDC
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