Sallisaw, Oklahoma

Sallisaw is the seat of Sequoyah County, in the eastern Oklahoma hills just off Interstate Forty near the Arkansas border. The name derives from a French word, salaison, meaning salt provisions, a reference to French hunters who salted bison meat near Sallisaw Creek. The town sits in the heart of the Cherokee Nation, and Sequoyah County is named for the Cherokee scholar who created the Cherokee syllabary in eighteen twenty-one, one of the few times in recorded history that a single person invented an entire writing system for a language. Sallisaw itself is known as the hometown of Charles Pretty Boy Floyd, who was born in Georgia in nineteen oh four and grew up nearby, the outlaw bank robber who became a Depression-era folk figure before being shot by federal agents in Ohio.