Cherokee
Chief Yonaguska
(1759 - 1839)
After hearing the scriptures from
the "Gospel according to Matthew", Chief Yonaguska replied, "It is a strange that the white people are not any better after
having this so long."
Yonaguska, interpreted as "Drowning
Bear," was born about 1759, some 40 years after English traders introduced the “black drink,” or rum, to
his people in the North Carolina mountains. He is described as strikingly handsome, strongly built, standing 6 feet 3 inches, with
a faint tinge of red—due to a slight strain of white blood on his father’s side—relieving the brown of his
cheek.
Like many dedicated reformers,
Yonaguska’s resolve was strengthened by first-hand experience—he had been addicted to alcohol most of his life.
When he was 60 years old and critically ill, Yonaguska fell into a trance. Certain that the end had come, his people gathered
around him at the Soco Council House and mourned him for dead.
In the council house was his adopted
son William Holland Thomas, a 14-year-old white boy who was destined to succeed him as chief and
become the only white man to serve as chief of the tribe. Drowning Bear referred to Will Thomas as
Wil-Usdi or "Little Will." Will learned the Cherokee customs as well as how to write in Cherokee. He also learned their
legends, history, and culture. Furthermore, at the age of 16, Will opened his first business (store) and perfected his
organizational, leadership, and managerial skills. With a volume of law books, Thomas also became a self-taught and persuasive lawyer;
acquired knowledge that would prove critical to the Cherokees' survival.
In approximately 24 hours, however, Yonaguska awakened.
When the chief addressed his people, he relayed a message from the spirit world: “The Cherokee must never
again drink whiskey. Whiskey must be banished.” He then had Will Thomas write out a pledge: “The undersigned Cherokees,
belonging to the town of Qualla,” it read, “agree
to abandon the use of spirituous liquors.” Yonaguska then signed it, followed by the entire council and town. Preserved
among Thomas’ papers, the pledge is now in the archives of the Mountain Heritage Center at Western Carolina University.
From the signing of the pledge until his death in 1839 at the age of 80, whiskey was almost unknown among the Cherokees. And
when any of his people broke the pledge—few did while he was alive—Yonaguska enforced the edict with the whipping
post and lash.
Today’s Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians are direct descendants of the Cherokee Indians who avoided,
or survived, the Indian Removal Act and "Trail of Tears”.
Yonaguska was the first among
his people to perceive the white man’s takeover of their mountain kingdom. As a 12 year old boy, he had a vision and
he discussed it; but no one paid any attention to him. As a young man, he had witnessed the havoc wreaked among his people
when Gen. Griffith Rutherford and his North Carolina militia
burned 36 Indian towns in 1776. Throughout the early 1800s Yonaguska was repeatedly pressured to induce his people to remove
to the West. He firmly resisted every effort, declaring that the Indians were safer from aggression among their rocks and
mountains. He continued by stating that the Cherokee belonged in their ancestral homeland. After the Cherokee lands on the
Tuckaseigee River were sold as part of the
treaty of 1819, Yonaguska continued to live on 640 acres set aside for him in a bend of the river between Ela and Bryson City, on the ancient site of the Cherokee town of
Kituhwa. As pressure increased for Indian removal, Yonaguska
became more determined to remain in his homeland, rejecting every government offer for removal west. He refused to accept
government assurances that his people would be left alone in the promised western lands. In the course of his life, he had
seen settlers push ever westward. Yonaguska knew that nothing short of complete control would ever satisfy them. “As
to the white man’s promises of protection,” he is said to have told government representatives, “they have
been too often broken; they are like the reeds in yonder river—they are all lies.”
After the removal of all but a
handful of mountain Cherokee to the West, Yonaguska gathered those left about him and settled at Soco Creek on lands purchased
for them by his adopted son, William H. Thomas. As a white man, Thomas could legally hold a deed to the lands and allow the
Cherokee to live on them. Shortly before his death in April 1839, Yonaguska had himself carried into the townhouse at Soco,
where, sitting upon a couch, he proclaimed his words to his people. The old man commended Thomas to them as their chief and
again warned them against ever leaving their own country. Then wrapping his blanket around him, he quietly lay back and died.
Yonaguska, the most prominent chief ever of the Eastern Band, was buried beside Soco Creek, about a mile below the old Macedonia mission, with a crude mound of stones to mark the
spot.
Sources: Eastern Band of Cherokee Nation; Museum of the Cherokee
Indian
