1817-19 Reservations 1: August 03, 1819, #213, at the Governor's island, 16 in family

1817-19 Reservations 2: Reservation released to North Carolina

1835 Census roll: Haywood Co, NC, 2m18-, 1m18+, 3f16-, 2f16+

1848 Mullay roll: #484 [of Cherokees who were in NC at time of ratification of Treaty of New Echota on May 23, 1835 and who did not remove to the west]

Aka (Facts Pg): Yo-nu-gv-ya-s-gi

Translation: Yo-na = Bear, A-gv-ya-s-gi = He is drowning

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Family

These are the only proven children of Yonaguska. There is additional documentation for these children, just one reference listed here for each one.

i. Big Witch (Te-tun-nees-kih) YONAGUSKA was born circa 1796. He appeared in the census in 1848 in Mullay Roll.6 Enumerated on Cutugajay Creek, Macon County Number: 425 Name: Te-tun-nees-kih Age: 48 Remarks: Yon-gos-keh’s Son

ii. Sally (Go-le-tse-hi) YONAGUSKA was born circa 1797. She appeared in the census in 1883 in Hester Roll.7 Enumerated at Cherokee, Swain County, North Carolina Number: 233 English Name: Sally Name of Indian Ancestor: Yona-gus-kee Married to Flying Squirrel, son of Junaluska

iii. Jenny (Ol-kin-nih) YONAGUSKA was born circa 1798. She appeared in the census in 1883 in Hester Roll.7 Enumerated at Cherokee, Swain County, North Carolina Number: 400 Indian Name: Jin-nih English Name: Jenny Name of Indian Ancestor: Yona-gus-kee Current Spelling of Name: Jennih Little John Age: Married to Littlejohn, son of Junaluska

iv. Chickoohih YONAGUSKA, born ca 1800.

v. Tiyahah (Ti-yah-ah) YONAGUSKA was born circa 1808. He appeared in the census in 1868 in Swetland Roll.8 Enumerated at Qualla Town Settlement Number: 86 Name: Ty-ye-hah Age: 60 Remarks: Son of Old Chief Yonaguska

Biography

NC History Project:

Yonaguska (1760?-1839)

By Troy L. Kickler, North Carolina History Project

Considered by many to be the last great chief of the Cherokee, Yonaguska (also known as Drowning Bear) consistently cooperated with the United States government and later in life warned against the effects of “the black drink” on the Cherokee. Yonaguska ensured that the Treaty of 1819 was observed and his people recognized as North Carolina citizens. As a result, the United States did not remove Yoganuska’s followers from their home in the North Carolina mountains.

Undoubtedly understanding the technological and numerical superiority of the United States military, Yoganuska always discouraged waging war against the United States. In 1811, for instance, he refused to join forces with Tecumseh and the British.

In 1819, he and the heads of approximately 50 families signed a treaty with the United States and officially withdrew from the Cherokee Nation. As citizens of North Carolina and the United States, each head of household received 640 acres on a reservation located where the Oconaluftee and Tuckasegee rivers flowed together.

During the 1820s, land speculators, with the help of alcohol, convinced many Oconaluftee Cherokee to sell their lands. At this time, Yonugaska was reported to have been an alcoholic, but after recovering from an illness and what some have called a trance, the chief gathered his followers, including his adopted son William H. Thomas (a 14-year-old white boy) and recounted the unfortunate history of the Catawba and discussed ways in which to improve his people’s happiness and state of life. That day he declared, “The Cherokee must never again drink whisky” and ordered a temperance pledge to be drafted. The Oconaluftee agreed to never imbibe liquor again, and if they did, risk enduring the lash.

But Yonaguska is most noteworthy for resisting peacefully the U.S. government’s attempt to remove his people to Oklahoma. In 1835 at the New Echota convention, Cherokee chiefs discussed the cessation of land to the U.S. But Yonaguska was noticeably absent, for he had always opposed removal of Cherokee. Instead, the chief dispatched Thomas to Washington, D.C. to lobby for Oconaluftee interests and be a watchdog for government dealings with any Cherokee. Meanwhile, Thomas persuaded other Cherokee chiefs to recognize the Oconaluftee land claims in the Treaty of 1819 and the North Carolina citizenship of Yonaguska’s followers. As a North Carolinian and American citizen, Yoganuska helped the United States Army after the removal in locating fugitive Cherokee in the mountains.

In the end, Yonaguska’s temperance reform helped his followers keep their land, and his and Thomas’s diplomacy kept the Oconaluftee from being forcibly removed.

Mount Yonaguska (6,150 ft.) is located on Haywood-Swain County line.

Sources:

Cherokee History and Culture, “Yonaguska,” http://www.cherokee-nc.com/history.php?Name=Yonaguska (accessed 14 September 2006); Theda Perdue, “Yonaguska (or Drowning Bear),” in William S. Powell, Dictionary of North Carolina Biography 6 vols. (Chapel Hill, 1979-91), North Carolina Gazetteer: A Dictionary of Tar Heel Place (Chapel Hill, 1968).

http://ncpedia.org/biography/yonaguska

Yonaguska (or Drowning Bear)

by Theda Perdue

1760?–April 1839

Yonaguska (or Drowning Bear), was head chief of the Cherokee middle towns in the crucial years from 1800 until his death. The exact date and place of his birth are unknown, but Charles Lanman, who visited the eastern Cherokee a decade after the old chief's death, reported that Yonaguska was "born in this mountain land . . . and died in the year 1838, in the seventy-fifth year of his age." Probably one of the last practitioners of polygamy among the Cherokee, Yonaguska was survived by two wives and many children.

As head chief he consistently urged peace with the United States and played a prominent role in the meeting between Cherokee chiefs and Tecumseh in 1811. This conference resulted in the Cherokee's refusal to join the Shawnee leader in his alliance with the British for an offensive against the United States.

In accordance with a provision of the treaty that delegates of the Cherokee Nation signed with the federal government in 1819, Yonaguska and the heads of at least fifty other families who lived along the Oconaluftee, Tuckasegee, and Little Tennessee rivers between the Balsam and Cowee mountains withdrew from the nation, received a reservation of 640 acres each, and became citizens of the state of North Carolina and the United States. Yonaguska's reservation was located on Governors Island at the confluence of the Oconaluftee and Tuckasegee rivers, and his followers obtained reservations along the Oconaluftee River and near Quallatown. In 1820 the chief sold his reservation for $1,300 and moved to Quallatown.

The extension of state laws over the Cherokee Nation in the late 1820s freed traders from the restrictions previously imposed on the sale of liquor and allowed unscrupulous speculators, whose appetite for land had been whetted by the discovery of gold in northern Georgia, to employ alcohol in frequently successful attempts to negotiate illegal sales of Cherokee property. Yonaguska realized that intemperance would destroy both himself and his tribesmen. According to William Holland Thomas, the white trader whom Yonaguska's clan adopted, the chief assembled the Oconaluftee Cherokee in 1830 and informed them that "he had been considering and devising ways to promote their happiness in the future." Citing the Catawba Indians who had almost been exterminated "as evidence of the injurious effects of intemperance," Yonaguska encouraged his people to refrain from the immoderate consumption of alcohol and then instructed his clerk to write down a pledge by which the Qualla Indians agreed to "abandon the use of spiritous liquors." The chief signed first, and all the residents of the town reportedly followed. In 1838 Thomas credited Yonaguska with the Oconaluftee Cherokee's "present state of improvement" because of his devotion to the cause of temperance.

When the Cherokee Council convened at New Echota in 1835 at the behest of the U.S. agent, the Reverend John F. Schermerhorn, to sign a treaty by which the Cherokee ceded all lands in the eastern United States and agreed to remove west of the Mississippi River, Yonaguska did not attend. He vehemently opposed removal, but after a minority of Cherokee led by John Ridge, Major Ridge, and Elias Boudinot accepted the government's proposal, Yonaguska dispatched Thomas to Washington. D.C., to ensure that the Oconaluftee Cherokee received their share of the benefits of the treaty. Thomas hesitated to take up the matter with the government for fear of delaying ratification by the Senate and thereby depriving the Cherokee who were desperately in need of financial aid of immediate assistance, but he did sign an agreement with the Ridge party in which the senators recognized the claim of the Oconaluftee Cherokee.

In 1837 Yonaguska and fifty-nine other Oconaluftee Cherokee submitted a memorial in which they stated to the commissioners who had been appointed to carry out the Treaty of New Echota that they were opposed to removal. The commissioners acknowledged the provision in the 1819 treaty by which the Oconaluftee Cherokee had withdrawn from the Cherokee Nation and become citizens of North Carolina, granted them their memorial, and exempted them from forced removal. According to Thomas, the primary motivation for Yonaguska's resistance to removal stemmed from the chief's belief that North Carolina, the state that had recognized the Cherokee's land titles, was "better and more friendly disposed to the Red Man than any other. That should they remove west, they would there too be, in a short time, surrounded by the settlements of the whites, and probably be included in a State disposed to oppress them." Yonaguska demonstrated his loyalty to North Carolina and the federal government by ordering his warriors to assist U.S. troops in capturing those Cherokee who had hidden in the mountains. For rendering this aid he received a commendation from Colonel William L. Foster, commanding officer of the Fourth U.S. Infantry.

Yonaguska's leadership ability, his steadfast dedication to temperance, and his willingness to cooperate with the U.S. government enabled the Oconaluftee Cherokee to secure the enforcement of the treaty of 1819 and the recognition of their rights as North Carolina citizens. Thus the followers of Yonaguska managed to avoid removal.

References:

• John Finger, The Eastern Band of the Cherokee, 1819–1900 (1984)
• Duane H. King, "The Origin of the Eastern Band of Cherokees as a Social and Political Entity," in King, ed., The Cherokees in Historical Perspective (1975)
• Charles Lanman, Adventures in the Wilds of the United States and British American Provinces (1856)
• James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee (1900)
• Mattie Russell, "William Holland Thomas: White Chief of the North Carolina Cherokee" (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1956).

From wikipedia (adapted from Cherokee tourism site http://www.cherokee-nc.com)

Chief Yonaguska, who was also known as Drowning Bear (the English approximtion of his name), was a figure of persistence and endurance in the story of the Cherokee. Yonaguska challenged Rev. Schermerhorn to explain the terms of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota that a handful of Cherokee had signed. He is also the only chief who remained in the hills to rebuild the Eastern Band with others who had escaped or eluded the soldiers. His adopted son, William Thomas, the only white chief the Cherokee ever had, would carry on Yonaguska’s work to establish what is now the Qualla Boundary. During his life, however, Yonaguska was also a reformer and a prophet, a leader who recognized the power of the white man’s liquor and early on realized the lengths to which settlers would go to take over Cherokee lands.

Yonaguska 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 was described as strikingly handsome, strongly built, standing 6 feet 3 inches (1.9 m), 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 townhouse and mourned him for dead. At the end of 24 hours, however, Yonaguska awoke to consciousness and spoke to his people, among whom 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 ever to serve as chief of the tribe. 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 whole 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.

Yonaguska was the first among his people to perceive the white man’s takeover of their mountain kingdom. As a boy of 12, he had such a vision and spoke of 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 and that the Cherokee belonged in their ancestral homeland. After the Cherokee lands on the Tuckasegee River were sold as part of the Treaty of 1819, Yonaguska continued to live on 640 acres (2.6 km2) 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 than ever 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.”

When the Gospel of St Matthew was translated into Cherokee and published, Yonaguska insisted on it being read to him first before allowing its circulation. Yonaguska's comment on Matthew was:[1]

   "Well, it seems a good book - strange that the white people are no better, after having had it so long."

Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

Establishing The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians 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, Will Thomas. As a white man, Thomas could legally hold a deed to the lands and allow the Cherokee to live on them.

Death

Shortly before his death in April, 1839, Yonaguska had himself carried into the townhouse at Soco where, sitting up on a couch, he made a last talk 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.

References

  1. Kephart, Horace (1936). The Cherokees of the Smoky Mountains;. Ithaca, N.Y.: The Atkinson Press. LCC E99.C5 K4.  LCCN 36-280 p31

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/AMERIND-US-SE/1999-11...

Drowning Bear was born c 1759 in Cherokee Nat East, and died April 1839. His second marriage was to Lizzie c 1810. She was born c 1780 in Cherokee Nat East.

More About Drowning Bear:

• 1835 Census roll: Ahmacolola River, GA
• 1848 Mullay roll: #484 (to heirs)

Children of Drowning Bear and his first, unknown, wife are: Sally, b. 1796; m. Flying Squirrel; b. 1796; d. Bef. 1884. More about Sally:

• 1848 Mullay roll: #174 as Sally
• 1851 Siler roll: Paint Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 82, roll# 334 as Sally
• 1852 Chapman roll: Paint Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 82, roll# 334 as Sally
• 1882-84 Hester roll: fam# 64, roll# 233 as Sally

More About Flying Squirrel:

• 1848 Mullay roll: #173 as Flying Squirrel (Chief of Paint Town)
• 1851 Siler roll: Paint Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 82, roll# 333 as Oo-co-la-hoh
• 1852 Chapman roll: Paint Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 82, roll# 333 as Oo-co-la-hoh

Big Witch, b. 1796; d. 1897; m. (1) Katy, c 1820; b. 1803; m. (2) Te-ta-ke-es-kih, Bef. 1884; b. 1826; d. Aft. 1884. Cherokee Myths, Mooney, p179, [1897]; "...epidemic of Grippe.. died, Big-Witch, oldest man in the Eastern Band and Wadi'yahi, old woman" More About Big Witch:

• 1848 Mullay roll: #425
• 1851 Siler roll: Wolf Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 47, roll# 541 as Te-tun-nus-kih
• 1852 Chapman roll: Wolf Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 47, roll# 541 as Te-tun-nus-kih
• 1882-84 Hester roll: fam# 10, roll# 48 as Te-tun-nees-kih

More About Katy:

• 1848 Mullay roll: #426
• 1851 Siler roll: Wolf Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 47, roll# 542 as Catih
• 1852 Chapman roll: Wolf Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 47, roll# 542 as Catih

More About Te-ta-ke-es-kih:

• 1851 Siler roll: Wolf Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 34, roll# 490 as Te-tuk-ke-yah-skih
• 1852 Chapman roll: Wolf Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 34, roll# 490 as Te-tuk-ke-yah-skih
• 1882-84 Hester roll: fam# 10, roll# 49 as Te-ta-ke-es-kih
• Jinney , b. 1808; d. Aft. 1882; m. Little John; b. February 23, 1806; d. Bef. 1882. More About Jinney:
• 1848 Mullay roll: #242 as Jinney
• 1851 Siler roll: Paint Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 45, roll# 186
• 1852 Chapman roll: Paint Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 45, roll# 186
• 1882-84 Hester roll: fam# 118, roll# 400 as Jenny Little-John (widow with orphaned g-son, Benjamin)

More About Little John:

• 1848 Mullay roll: #241 as Little John
• 1851 Siler roll: Paint Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 45, roll# 185
• 1852 Chapman roll: Paint Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 45, roll# 185

Kah-tol-stah, b. 1812; m. (1) Yona-choo-we-ya; b. 1802.

More About Kah-tol-stah:

• 1848 Mullay roll: #486 as Kah-ta-tih
• 1851 Siler roll: Wolf Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 56, roll# 593 as Kah-tol-stah
• 1852 Chapman roll: Wolf Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 56, roll# 593 as Kah-tol-stah
• 1882-84 Hester roll: fam# 66, roll# 244 as Kah-tats-tih

More About Yona-choo-we-ya:

• 1848 Mullay roll: #485 as Yona-chaweah aka Bear Meat
• 1851 Siler roll: Wolf Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 56, roll# 592 as

Yo-na-choo-we-yuh

* 1852 Chapman roll: Wolf Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 56, roll# 592 as Yo-na-choo-we-yuh.

Children of Drowning Bear and Lizzie are: High-ah-nee, b. 1812, Cherokee Nat East; d. August 10, 1896; m. (1) John Adair Bell (Source: Emmet Starr, Adair 1-1-3-1.), c 1840; b. January 01, 1805, Cherokee Nat East; d. May 01, 1860; m. (2) Alexander Scott, c 1845; b. c 1800, Cherokee Nat East; d. September 06, 1869.

More About High-ah-nee:

• 1851 Drennan roll: Flint, 557 as High Ah-nee
• 1880 Census [CN]: Flint, 1223 as Hianie Scott

More About John Adair Bell:

• 1835 Census roll: Will's Valley, 1m18-, 4m18+, 4f16-, 2f16+
• 1851 Drennan roll: Delaware, 868
• Clan: Deer Clan (Ga-ho-ga)
• RG75, Entry 545: 1855, Service w/Cher Removal, 1833~1834

More About Alexander Scott:

• 1851 Drennan roll: Flint, 557
• Military service: November 05, 1861, Drew's Regiment, Co E, Pvt

Young Bird, b. c 1824; d. January 22, 1875; m. Peggy Wrinklesides; b. c 1832; d. December 25, 1891. More About Young Bird:

• 1851 Drennan roll: Flint, 559 as Young Bird
• More About Peggy Wrinklesides:
• 1851 Drennan roll: Flint, 559 as Ah-u-que
• Residence: 1851, Flint Dist, IT

Che-ul-lut-tuh, b. 1829; d. Aft. 1882; m. Wilsoneh Oo-kum-muh; b. 1825; d. Bef. 1882.

• More About Che-ul-lut-tuh:
• 1848 Mullay roll: #141 as Chu-la-oh-eh
• 1851 Siler roll: Wolf Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 53, roll# 581 as
• Che-ul-lut-tuh
• 1852 Chapman roll: Wolf Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 53, roll# 581 as
• Che-ul-lut-tuh
• 1882-84 Hester roll: #542 as Che-gail-a-teh (widow)
• More About Wilsoneh Oo-kum-muh:
• 1851 Siler roll: Wolf Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 53, roll# 580
• 1852 Chapman roll: Wolf Town, Haywood Co, NC, fam# 53, roll# 580.

Most of the genealogical information on Drowning bear's descendants is from the online genealogy of James Hicks, called Cherokee Lineages, at http://www.genealogy.com/users/h/i/c/James-R-Hicks-VA/index.html

His address:

James R Hicks

8047 Gatehouse Rd

Falls Church, VA 22042