Dr. Duane King will be lecturing . Sequoyah is perhaps the most famous person in American history about whom is little is known. His fame can be attributed to the fact that he is the only person in 5,000 years of recorded history to devise a writing system without first being literate in some language. The feat has never been duplicated either before or since his introduction of the Cherokee syllabary in 1821, that transformed the Cherokee Nation.