Exterminating Indians in the Christian Way

"Yonaguska, or Ya'nu-gun'ski, Drowning Bear, is a key figure in the Smoky Mountains story. Others in Georgia played much larger roles in the history of the [Cherokee] Nation, but none meant more to the isolated mountain Cherokee. He is described as a handsome, tall man of six foot three, a powerful orator, and a prophet... he swore off whiskey and led his people in taking the pledge. Thus, during Yonaguska's lifetime the Smoky Mountain Cherokee were free of the historic cursed plague inflicted upon them from without. Since early days, traders had found it profitable to haul in liquor, legally or otherwise. Sometimes treaty commissioners weakened Indian opposition with doses of firewater. Its dangers were of grave concern to Cherokee leaders, who enacted strict laws regulating the sale of whiskey, which the whites persistently and successfully evaded...

Drowning Bear's principal influence, however, was in holding his people to the mountains and to the old religion of the mountains. He did not succomb to Christian missionaries, but after listening to one or two chapters of the Bible, remarked, 'It seems to be a good book--strange that the white people are not better, after having had it so long." (86) --Michael Frome, Strangers in High Places: The Story of the Great Smoky Mountains

Drowning Bear died in 1839 at the age of sixty. His lifetime spanned a period of time in which the federal government made a series of forced treaties with the Cherokees that gradually took away their ancestral lands, culminating with the Trail of Tears in October 1838. 14,000 Cherokees were rounded up by the U.S. Army into concentration camps, then forced at gunpoint to march to Oklahoma. Several thousand died from starvation and weather exposure along the way. However, a small number of Cherokees managed to avoid the Trail of Tears by hiding out in the mountains. They are the ancestors of those Cherokees who today live in North Carolina. Drowning Bear was the leader of these fugitives.