The Cherokee scholar Sequoyah (c.1770-1843), the creator of the Cherokee syllabary, was born at Tuskegee and lived in this area until the early 19th century. He was the son of a Cherokee woman named Wurtah and Nathaniel Gist, a fur trader. He grew up with his mother and her people, speaking only Cherokee for years. He is one of the few people from a pre-literate society known to have independently created an effective writing system. His syllabary inspired the development of 21 other scripts, used in a total of 65 languages across the world.