 One such man, Cherokee Austin Curtis, married into a prominent Vai family and became an important Vai chief himself.It is notable that the romantic "inscription on a house" that first drew the world's attention to the existence of the Vai script was in fact on the home of Curtis, a Cherokee.What we can be reasonably sure about is that Curtis was not only a well-connected and influential man within the Vai community, but one who spoke the Vai language and adopted Vai customs, who settled in Vai country some four years before the invention of the Vai script, and who later appears to have welcomed the use of the script on his house.