![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Thomas’s oral history sessions with Mooney result in a touching and fascinating fictionalized biography. But the Confederate defeat marks the end of Thomas’s good fortune, and his behavior grows so violent and erratic that he is eventually committed. A cousin of Jefferson Davis, Thomas recruits a Confederate unit of Cherokee soldiers at the outbreak of the Civil War he is promoted to colonel and marries and raises a family. He purchases vast tracts of land so the local Cherokees can continue living on their ancestral soil during the federal government’s forced resettlement of the out-of-state Cherokee tribes. He eventually studies law, becoming affluent, and is elected to the state Senate. Through the years, Thomas runs a trading post where he assimilates into the Cherokee culture. Conley WCU GENERAL E99.C5 C716 2005 The Eastern Band of Cherokees, 1819-1900 by John R. Conley WCU REFERENCE E99.C5 C694 2007 The Cherokee Nation by Robert J. At age 12, the fatherless and white Thomas was adopted by the renowned Cherokee chieftain Yonaguska (Drowning Bear) and entered the tribe as his son, Wil Usdi (Little Will). Fitzgerald (Photographer) Chadwick Smith (Introduction by) E99.C A Cherokee Encyclopedia by Robert J. The narrative opens in 1890 with the octogenarian William Holland Thomas (1805–1893) imprisoned at a state mental hospital in Morganton, N.C., from where he recounts his eventful life story to the federal government ethnologist, James Mooney. This well-told, informative historical novel is from the late Cherokee writer Conley ( Cherokee Thoughts: Honest and Uncensored), who died in February 2014. ![]()
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