Yonaguska
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Yonaguska | |
---|---|
Principal Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians | |
In office 1824–1839 | |
Preceded by | Office established |
Succeeded by | Salonitah |
Personal details | |
Born | 1759 Anson County, North Carolina, British America |
Died | 1839 Soco, North Carolina, U.S. |
Nationality | Cherokee |
Yonaguska (1759–1839), who was known as Drowning Bear (the English meaning of his name), was a leader among the Cherokee of the Lower Towns of North Carolina.[1][2][3]
During the
During his life, Yonaguska was a reformer and a prophet; he was a leader who recognized the destructive power of the white man's liquor and the settlers' insatiable greed for Cherokee lands.
Early life
Yonaguska was born about 1759 in the Cherokee Lower Towns of present-day North Carolina and Georgia.
Yonaguska was described as a strikingly handsome man, strongly built, and standing 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m). He suffered from becoming addicted to alcohol as a young man. He and his wife adopted as their son
Awakening
In 1819 when he was 60 years old, Yonaguska became critically ill. He had a vision, which he told his people after recovering. His message from the spirit world was that, "The Cherokee must never again drink whiskey. Whiskey must be banished."[citation needed]
He had Will Thomas write out a pledge: "The undersigned Cherokees, belonging to the town of Qualla agree to abandon the use of spirituous liquors." Yonaguska signed it, followed by the council (chiefs of the clans) and town residents. From the signing of the pledge until Yonaguska's death in 1839 at the age of 80, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians refrained from using liquor. On the few occasions when he learned of someone breaking the pledge, Yonaguska had the culprit whipped.
Throughout the early 19th century, federal agents tried to persuade Yonaguska to remove his people to lands west of the Mississippi River. He firmly resisted their efforts, declaring that the Cherokee were safer among their rocks and mountains, and belonged in their ancestral homeland. Other chiefs made the
As pressure increased by the federal government for removal of Indians from the Southeast, Yonaguska rejected every offer for land exchange and subsidies. Having seen European-American settlers push westward through North Carolina, he did not believe they would ever be satisfied. He did not want to leave his homeland and face more removal pressure later. He thought the United States government promises of protection were "too often broken; they are like the reeds in yonder river—they are all lies."[citation needed]
The missionary Samuel Goodenough worked with
Well, it seems a good book - strange that the white people are no better, after having had it so long.[4]
Yonaguska approved the distribution of the scriptures to his people.
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
The treaties of 1817 and 1819 with the federal government reduced the territory of the
They settled together at Soco Creek on lands purchased for them by his adopted son, Will Thomas, as the Cherokee were not allowed to buy land outside their nation. Although adopted as Yonaguska's son, Thomas was still considered "white" under the law and could legally buy land; he could also allow the Cherokee to live on "his" property. Purchased for the use of the Cherokee, his land was the basis of Qualla Boundary. It is now the territory of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, a federally recognized tribe.
Death
Shortly before his death in April 1839, Yonaguska was carried into the town house at Soco, where he gave a last talk to his people. The old man commended Thomas to them as their chief and warned them against ever leaving their own country. Wrapping his blanket around him, he quietly lay back and died.
Yonaguska was buried beside Soco Creek, about a mile below the old Macedonia mission, with a mound of stones to mark the spot.
References
- ISBN 978-1-77048-826-7.
- ISBN 978-0-403-09745-6.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8108-1931-3.
- LCC E99.C5 K4. p31
Sources
- Blankenship, Bob. Cherokee Roots, Volume 1: Eastern Cherokee Rolls. (Cherokee: Bob Blankenship, 1992).
- Brown, John P. Old Frontiers: The Story of the Cherokee Indians from Earliest Times to the Date of Their Removal to the West, 1838. (Kingsport: Southern Publishers, 1938).
- Ehle, John. The Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. (New York: Doubleday, 1989).
- Finger, John R. The Eastern Band of Cherokees 1819-1900. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984).
- Lumpkin, Wilson. The Removal of the Cherokee Indians from Georgia. (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1907).
- Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee. (Nashville: Charles and Randy Elder-Booksellers, 1982).
- Smithsonian Institution, Mooney's American Bureau of Ethnology Records, Photograph of Katalsta & Ewi Katalsta, daughter & granddaughter of Yonaguska/Yanaguski.
- Hicks, James R. "Cherokee Lineages," Register Report of Drowning Bear
- Virginia Moore Carney, Eastern Band Cherokee Women - Cultural Persistence in Their Letters and Speeches, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005
- Donal F. Lindsey, Indians At Hampton Institute 1877-1923, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995