Great Leader: Yonaguska, Janaluska and William Holland Thomas

Today's post is a story of cruel ingratitude and selfless loyalty.  William Holland Thomas was the only White man ever appointed as a chief of the Cherokee Nation and it's easy to see why they reposed such trust in him.  His story intersects with the lives of two other great leaders, so we'll tell all three men's stories here.

Janaluska (1775-1868) was a war leader of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, in what is now North Carolina.  In 1813, he and his warriors joined General Andrew Jackson's army in a punitive expedition against the Red Stick Creeks in what is now Alabama.  At the battle of Horseshoe Bend, March 27, 1814, he joined Jackson in interrogating some prisoners.  One of them broke loose and lunged for the General.  Janaluska intervened and killed the attacker, saving Jackson's life.  Later, Janaluska was awarded land for participating in the fight against the Creeks.  In 1819, he lost his rights to the land after yet another treaty with the Natives was violated.  He moved to the larger Cherokee settlement of Qualla Town.  While there, he may have become acquainted with a young clerk at the trading post, William Holland Thomas.  Their acquaintance would stand Janaluska in good stead later in life.

Yonaguska (1759-1839) was another Cherokee leader who knew Thomas well.  William Holland Thomas (1805-1893), was born in what is now Waynesville, North Carolina.  His father died by drowning when William was a baby.  Later, he was apprenticed to a trader in Qualla Town and took a genuine interest in the post's Cherokee clientele, learning their language and customs.  In time, the fatherless young man and the older Cherokee warrior Yonaguska developed a close friendship.  Yonaguska adopted Thomas as his son, giving him the name "Will-Usdi" or Little Will.  In 1820, the trading post closed.  As partial payment of his past-due wages, the trader gave Thomas a set of law books.  Thomas studied them and was admitted to practice law in North Carolina.  Eventually, he came back to Qualla Town and reopened the trading posts.  He and Yonaguska remained in close touch and they would have much to talk about in the years to come.

Jackson's Administration passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, aimed primarily at the five largest Southeastern tribes, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole.  As the pressure mounted on the Cherokee to leave or face military action, Janaluska made the journey to Washington and asked to see the man whose life he'd once saved.  Jackson granted him an audience, then denied the incident ever happened.  He told Janaluska there was nothing he could do and dismissed him.  Later, as he saw his people being dispossessed, Janaluska remarked that, if he'd known at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend what was to come, history would've been written differently.  In 1838, he was placed in a stockade and began the trip to Oklahoma.  Several weeks in, he and fifty other Cherokee deserted and tried to head back to North Carolina.  They were arrested and deported to Oklahoma.  Janaluska stayed until 1847, when he could stand it no longer and returned to North Carolina.

Meanwhile, Yonaguska had been made the Principal Chief of the Cherokees remaining in North Carolina.  Some of them had received earlier land grants and believed the government would honor them.  Yonaguska wasn't so sure.  He asked him adopted son to represent the North Carolina Cherokee's interests in Washington.  Thomas realized that the Cherokee wouldn't be able to stay in North Carolina unless someone bought the land outright.  Since Natives were losing their land rights and unable to purchase land, Thomas used his own money and credit, as well as available Cherokee funds, to purchase land in North Carolina in and around Qualla Town.  This land became the Qualla Boundary, the nucleus of the land held by the Eastern Band Cherokee in North Carolina.  He also fought for, and won, the right of Yonaguska and several other Cherokee to become citizens of North Carolina and thus avoid deportation.  

Yonaguska now repaid the debt to his adopted son, by convincing the Eastern Cherokee to chose William Holland Thomas to replace him as Principal Chief, the only White man ever to hold that post.  After Yonaguska's death, Thomas continued to fight for the right of his adopted people to stay in North Carolina.  In 1847, when Janaluska returned home, Thomas took his case to the state legislature, earning state citizenship for the old warrior so that he could remain in Qualla without fear of arrest and removal, again.  Thomas continued his labors on behalf of the Cherokee, seeking election to the state legislature so that he could use the leverage of that position on their behalf.  He served from 1848-1860.  When North Carolina seceded from the Union, Thomas formed a troop of cavalry and infantry from Cherokee recruits, and others of Scots and Sotch-Irish extraction.  Thomas' Legion of Cherokees and Highlanders.  They fired the last shots of the Civil War, days after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox.  Another Cherokee unit serving in the West under General Stand Watie also claims that distinction. 

Following the War, Thomas' health began to deteriorate.  It's believed he suffered from Alzheimer's Disease.  He was eventually sent to a mental institution and spent the next several years of his life in and out of mental hospitals.  During his lucid moments, he assisted ethnologist James Mooney of the Smithsonian Institution by recounting his knowledge of the Cherokee, their history, legends and traditions.    

Settlers versus Natives: Battle of Tallushatchee, November 3, 1813

Descriptions of this battle from Settlers who participated in it show the cruelty visited on Natives during the Creek War (1813-1814).  A warning: the following is harrowing and very disturbing reading.

After the Massacre/Battle at Fort Mims, in August, 1813, militia in what is now Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee scrambled to respond.  Andrew Jackson was placed at the head of 2500 Tennessee militia forces.  They began constructing Fort Strother on the Coosa River near the Red Stick Creek village of Tallushatchie.  Knowing that a sizeable force of Red Stick warriors were assembling in the town, Jackson ordered his friend, Col. John Coffee, to attack the town with a force of about 900 cavalry.  Coffee arrived outside the town on November 3, 1813, divided his forces, and sent two companies toward the town as a lure to the warriors inside. 

The idea worked.  As the Creek men poured out of the village to attack the forward companies, the rest of Coffee's force entered the town, killing and burning indiscriminately.  Blood was up and tempers high on both sides.  The Settlers were angry over the incident at Fort Mims, the Creeks were angry at the encroachment on their land and the fact that the Settlers were daring to remove them from it.  Men and even women stood at the doors of their homes, trying to prevent the killing of their families and the destruction of their village.  Davy Crockett, who served as a scout with Coffee's forces later record that "we shot them down like dogs."  Another veteran, Richard Keith Call, who would go on to face Osceola in the Second Seminole War, later said:

"The next morning after our march we entered the Indian village, and here I first saw the carnage of the battle field. I saw it in its worst aspect – when the hour of danger had passed, when I could excite no feeling or passion in my breast, to control my sympathy and sorrow for human suffering. It was to me a horrible and revolting scene – the battle had ended in the village, the warriors fighting in their board houses, which gave little protection against the rifle bullets or musket ball. They fought in the midst of their wives and children, who frequently shared their bloody fate. They fought bravely to the last, none asking or receiving quarter, nor did resistance cease until the last warrior had fallen. Humanity might well have wept over the gory scene before us. We found as many as eight or ten dead bodies in a single cabin, sometimes the dead mother clasped the dead child to her breast, and to add another appalling horror to the bloody catalogue – some of the cabins had taken fire, and half consumed human bodies were seen amidst the smoking ruins. In other instances dogs had torn and feasted on the mangled bodies of their masters. Heartsick I turned from the revolting scene. Very different seems the picture in the cool moment of inaction than in the excitement of battle – in the one – passion, the desire to triumph, and vengeance make demons, in the other as the brain becomes more composed, the pulse to beat less quickly, the heart resumes its sway – and it would be a relief to shed tears over the carnage around us – I remember an instant of a brave young soldier, who after fighting like a tiger until the engagement was over, fainted at the sight of the blood he had helped to spill." from Wikipedia.

Davy Crockett recalled an even grimmer memory from the day after this battle.  Several Creeks had gathered into a large home or other structure which had been burned around them.  Near or below the dwelling was a cellar in which were potatoes.  Needing food, Coffee's forces divided up the potatoes and Crockett remembered that they were already cooked by the fires and from the grease of the bodies, but they had to eat the potatoes anyway, as there was no other food around.  Coffee lost 5 killed and 41 wounded.  Creek casualties weren't tallied up.  As horrible as this was, and is, things were about to get a lot worse.  Andrew Jackson would now enter the fight.