Dr. Brett Riggs presents The Return of Standing Wolf in a special webinar presented by the National Trail of Tears Association.

Thank you, Jack, and thank you, Troy Wayne. That’s exactly what I want to try to do today: share a little story, really a kind of personal story about an individual and a family and their experience with the removal, and in this case, their escape from it. This is really two or three stories embedded into each other.

Standing Wolf, as Anita noted, has descendants in our audience here. For the second half of the 19th century at least, he was perhaps, after Sequoyah and maybe John Ross, the most famous Cherokee in America, and he himself did not know that. We’re going to explore that a little bit and a little bit about his story, both the ostensible story that was told about him and the backstory as we understand it today.

But first, I’d like to do a big shoutout and a thank you to Anita Fingersmith. I pestered her to death about documentary and genealogical details, and she listened to all the crazy stuff I had to say. There are many other folks like Mike Grinn, Lamar Marshall, Robin Swaney, Elizabeth Thomas, Kirk Savage, and Land Scream who shared their time, their documentary resources, and their thoughts and ideas about this work in particular. Most of all, I’d like to dedicate this to TJ Holland, former Cultural Resources Director of the EBCI and director of the Junaluska Memorial Museum. He was the EBCI representative to the TOTA board. He was a principal mover in the background research of this story and my friend, always ready to conspire about the secret story embedded within this.

To introduce you to our main character, Standing Wolf, or Guayakadoga, was from Western North Carolina. In the 1840s, he was described as being one of the great men of his tribe. He was born back in the 1780s at Tuckelichie, which was there in Bryson City. His parents were Will Noddy and Betsy, and he had a famous kindred. Very well-known individuals like Yonaguska, Gold Soya, Big Tom, and Nancy Catholic were his uncles and aunts. They were some of the founding characters of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. They separated themselves from the Cherokee Nation, remained on their old lands after the cession of 1819, and took reserves. That reserve clause is always sitting in the background for Eastern Cherokees as an origin point for them as a different political entity.

Around 1815, he marries Wagie; it was both their second marriage, so they had children from before that marriage. He first shows up in the documentary record in what was called the True and Accurate Enumeration of Indians in the cession of 1819. In 1820, he was recognized as continuing to reside on those lands ceded in 1829. He signed over power of attorney and was part of a group that identified themselves as Indians who separated themselves from the Cherokee Nation and were now citizens of the U.S., but they were ignorant of the English language and the laws and customs of their adopted country, so they needed legal representation.

In 1834, he moves back into the Cherokee Nation to a place called Yellowtown, right at the northeastern edge of the Cherokee Nation. He shows up on the 1835 census as being in Sticoa with 16 people in his household, including five Cherokee readers. His property valuation at Yellowtown, part of Sticoa, included three log cabins, a hot house, and eight acres in cultivation—a farm just getting going when the Treaty of New Echota hit and everything that followed.

In 1838, though he had been part of a group that lived outside the nation, known as citizen Cherokees, he was back in the nation at this point, subject to arrest and removal. On June 4th, his whole family was rounded up by the North Carolina Mounted Volunteers and remanded to Fort Lindsay, at the northeastern corner of the Cherokee Nation. They stayed there from June 20th to July 13th, then traveled down to Fort Cass, the immigration depot. In late August, that whole group escaped from Fort Cass, returned to North Carolina, and resettled what was called Koala Town in September of 1838.

Standing Wolf had a long and productive life after that. He lived at Wolftown from 1840, probably 1838, to 1855. He was one of the founding directors of the Cherokee Company, incorporated in North Carolina for the cultivation and manufacture of sugar and silk. I don’t think they made an ounce of sugar or one skein of silk, as it was a shell to facilitate the incorporation of the Eastern Cherokees under North Carolina laws. In 1848, the Malay Roll shows Standing Wolf, then 60, and Wagie, 55, at Wolftown, with their daughters living with them and their sons nearby. In 1855, Wagie dies, and in 1856, Standing Wolf acquires property and moves to Deertown, Lower Big Cove.

In 1858, a newspaper reporter describes Standing Wolf as a venerable old Cherokee who’s been a member of the church for 23 years. The expression of his countenance is benign, pleasant, and cheerful. He’s loved and respected by all who know him. He still wears the moccasin, the hunting shirt, and the belt with a big butcher knife in it. Even though they’ve been talking about him as old since 1838, he was only 76 when he died in 1864. He left quite a legacy for the Eastern Band, with many illustrious descendants.

Here’s a map showing some of these places in case you’re not familiar with the fine-scale landscape of Western North Carolina, where some of these places are located, such as Koala, Tuckelichie Town, and Yellowtown, and their relative positions to the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation and county boundaries in 1835-1838.

Why is he famous? In 1846, a newspaper article first published in the New York Evening Mirror, later picked up by the Boston Recorder, identified him as Standing Wolf and told the story of his capture and escape. His story became familiar to people across the country as these articles got picked up by newspapers everywhere. The writer, identified as a Washington correspondent, focused on two major things: when the soldiers came to arrest his family on June 4th, Standing Wolf asked them if they could stop and pray before they left. The interpreter, identified as Bob the Sergeant, agreed, and Standing Wolf led the family in song and prayer, praying for the Lord Jesus to forgive the white people. This deeply affected the literary crowd and newspaper readers of America because it gave Standing Wolf the moral high ground and struck a chord with those feeling guilty about Indian removal.

The other focus was an officer giving Standing Wolf permission to go back home because he was a citizen of North Carolina. This presented a legal point to the American readership, showing the position of the Eastern Cherokees as citizens who should remain in the state.

William Holland Thomas, the principal agent and representative for the Eastern Cherokees, had a very prominent role in their history. He had grown up with the Cherokee communities, was adopted by Yonaguska, and spoke the Cherokee language. In 1846, while lobbying in Washington, D.C., he made sure the Eastern Cherokees were included in the benefits of the 1846 agreement without having to immigrate.

Thomas had lobbied for the citizen Cherokees in Washington, D.C., in 1836, hobnobbed with the Cherokee committee, and included a list of people seeking a permit to remain in place during the removal. Though Standing Wolf was back in the Cherokee Nation, he was included in this list, securing a permit signed by the Cherokee committee and commissioners on behalf of the U.S.

In 1853, a full-length feature article about Standing Wolf appeared in the Spirit of the Age newspaper in Raleigh, North Carolina, and was picked up by newspapers everywhere. This story, different in detail from the 1846 article, was authored by George Washington Hayes, who was the person called Sergeant Bob by the Washington correspondent. Hayes served in the North Carolina legislature, spoke Cherokee, and was a contemporary and associate of William Holland Thomas.

Hayes began his story by saying he was posted in the Cherokee Nation as a sergeant in the North Carolina Mounted Volunteers. On June 4th, they went out to arrest people on the northeastern edge of the nation. At Standing Wolf’s house, they captured him and his family. Hayes noted Standing Wolf’s request to pray, and the emotional impact it had on the soldiers, emphasizing the moment Standing Wolf forgave the whites. After being paroled and returning to check on his family, Standing Wolf was ultimately mustered in at Fort Cass and found a place in the camps.

By late August, Standing Wolf and his family escaped from Fort Cass, returned to North Carolina, and resettled at Koala Town. The pursuit by the military was intense, but they eventually desisted, and Standing Wolf’s family was safe. They remained in North Carolina, becoming prominent citizens and a significant part of Cherokee history.

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Let’s open the floor for discussion and questions. I’ll stop sharing so we can see everyone and talk. If you have any thoughts or comments, feel free to unmute yourself.