The Trail of Tears, which the Cherokee refer to as Nunahi-Duna-Dlo-Hilu-I or Trail Where They Cried, is where Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, John Ross, had lost his wife Quatie. Thomas was in Washington during the Treaty of New Echota negotiations and had successfully lobbied for the right of a number of Indians to remain in North Carolina. These Indians are the present-day Eastern Band, and they were also called Oconaluftee, Lufty and Qualla Indians. In the late winter of 1839, while Thomas was in Washington, Yonaguska died. Thomas learned about it in April. Before his death, however, the old chief had summoned the men in his band to form a circle around his pallet in the Soco Council House. They accepted his recommendation that "Little Will" be allowed to succeed him. Yonaguska then advised them to abstain from drinking liquor and to never move west. Thomas had become Chief of the Oconaluftee and he was the only white man to hold that office. (Also see Cherokee War Rituals, Culture, Festivals, Government, and Beliefs.)

The Western North Carolinians had fought the Cherokee for decades. If the Cherokee fight in the  American Civil War will they join the North? Will they remain neutral? On the other hand, the Cherokee had entered into six separate treaties with the United States between 1777 and 1835. In each case, federal authorities had sought to extend the frontiers of white settlement by extinguishing Indian title to land. The U.S. had broken several promises, including President Andrew Jackson's unconscionable   betrayal of Chief Junaluska and his Cherokee. The great warrior and chief had saved General Jackson's life at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, and when "Old Hickory" was elected the 7th President, he forced the Cherokee from their homeland. But by the 1860s, the highlanders and Cherokee were neighbors and, moreover, friends. Cherokee intermarriage with neighboring whites was also more common.  Furthermore, prior to his death, Yonaguska had commanded his people to obey Chief Thomas. In 1883, Ziegler recorded that "before Yonaguska died he assembled his people and publicly willed the chieftainship to his clerk, friend and adopted son, W. H. Thomas, who he commended as worthy of respect and whom he adjured them to obey as they had obeyed him. He was going to the home provided for him by the Great Spirit; he would always keep watch over his people and would be grieved to see any of them disobey the new chief he had chosen to rule over them." Also, General Winfield Scott and the United States Army--enforcing Jackson's Indian Removal Policy--had eradicated the Cherokee during that Trail of Tears. The Indians vividly remembered Jackson's betrayal and the 4000 Cherokees that perished. (Also see: Cherokee Declaration and the American Civil War and American Indians in the Civil War.) In the beginning of the Civil War, Scott was appointed General-in-Chief of the Union Army; he was also a veteran of the War of 1812, hero during the Mexican-American War, former presidential candidate, and during the Civil War was credited for his superb Anaconda Plan. Other notable soldiers of the Mexican-American War: Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg, U. S. Grant, "Stonewall" Jackson, Zachary Taylor, and Jefferson Davis.

According to Neely, North Carolina's Eastern Band of Cherokees, p. 162, "Some Cherokees desired neutrality while as many as 30 joined the Union Army." Oral history states that many of the disloyal Cherokees were later murdered by their relatives because they had betrayed Thomas. The Indians that had joined the Union Army not only fought against their brothers, but after the War were credited for returning to the mountains with the dreaded smallpox. Captured Confederate Cherokees, however, had been held in Federal prisoner of war camps. And after the conflict, the paroled Indians immediately returned to the mountains and most likely with smallpox. (Smallpox is considered biological warfare and is currently deemed a Weapon of Mass Destruction.) Mumps and measles were responsible for most of the Cherokee killed during the war. And after the war, smallpox killed over one hundred Cherokees (Thomas's letter concerning smallpox).

On September 15, 1861, two Cherokee companies (200 soldiers) loyally answered the call to arms. These 200 Indians were originally known as the Junaluska Zouaves (in honor of Chief Junaluska), and Thomas also referred to them as the North Carolina Cherokee Battalion (O.R., Series 1, 51, II, p. 304 and O.R., 1, 49, Part 2, p. 754). By the end of the war, muster records reflected that almost every "able-bodied Cherokee," about 400 soldiers, from Western North Carolina had entered into the Confederate Army. Their loyalty was to Chief Thomas and then to the Confederacy. And in O.R., 1, 53, p. 314, Thomas had stated that the Cherokees didn't own any slaves, so slavery wasn't a motive. 

 President Jefferson Davis's Cousin and Friend

Thomas's American Civil War Strategy

Thomas strongly believed in defensive guerrilla warfare and, since the Union army typically outnumbered the Confederate army by more than two-to-one, he wisely opposed the traditional Napoleonic Linear Tactics. (See Cherokee Indians: Weapons and Warfare.) Thomas was not a Fire-Eater, he initially opposed secession, and during the war a $5,000 bounty was offered to anyone that would assassinate the Confederate Chief.

"Many of them [Thomas' Legion] joined with the promise that they were not to be taken out of the State except in the North Carolina mountain of defense." Captain Robert A. Akin, Company H, Walker's Battalion, Thomas' Legion

The mountaineers, like their Overmountain forefathers during the Revolution, vehemently believed in a defensive war. Their mountain ancestors proved their defensive strategy by surprising and destroying the British Army at two key southern battles: Kings Mountain and Cowpens. Who knew the Western North Carolina geography and topography better than the indigenous Cherokee and Mountaineer?  Thomas petitioned Richmond to authorize the recruitment of "additional Indians and such whites as I may select." His primary goal was to recruit a full battalion and ultimately a mounted regiment to operate as an independent guerrilla unit for the "local defense of the Cumberland Gap in pro-Unionist East Tennessee and Western North Carolina." According to Thomas's writings, Jefferson Davis agreed to arm, supply, and support the unit. In future correspondence with Davis, Thomas stated, "I have increased the Battalion of Indians and Mountaineers to a regiment and am progressing with a Legion. Not for one year but for three years or during the war." (North Carolina Division of Archives and History, April 17, 1862; and Vernon H. Crow, Storm in the Mountains: Thomas' Confederate Legion of Cherokee Indians and Mountaineers, 12-36.) Consequently, Thomas wrote to Davis and "submitted a plan for the defenses of East Tennessee." November 8, 1862, Strawberry Pains, TN. (O.R., Ser. I, Vol. 20, pt. II, p. 395) 

General Ulysses S. Grant, traveling through the Cumberland Gap in 1864 noted: "With two brigades of the Army of the Cumberland I could hold that pass against the army which Napoleon led to Moscow."