Sequoyah (George Gist) - Sequoyah

Cherokee link

Actually it's by way of the Shawnee, who were often a connecting link between tribes to their west/south/north and tribes to the east. The Shawnee were frenemies (sometimes friendly, other times clashing over territory) with the Powhatan Confederacy, and also with the Tsalagi ("Cherokee"). When they weren't fighting, they were trading sons and daughters as alliance tokens/hostages.

Iroquois. ... They were known during the colonial years to the French as the "Iroquois League," and later as the "Iroquois Confederacy," and to the English as the "Five Nations" (before 1722), and later as the "Six Nations," comprising the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora peoples.

The Shawnee were Algonquian speakers (like the various Powhatan tribes), but they were in contact with the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscaroras and Tsalagi ("Cherokee").

The Tuscaroras got crowded out to the North, which is why they wound up joining the "Five Nations" andmaking it "Six".

Tecumseh, by the way, was a Shawnee. Most people don't know that.

This profile for Sequoyah has a lot of unrelated people attached. He may have had as many as five wives, but most of their names are not known. Starr lists only seven surviving children.