Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on William Holland Thomas.

Indian agent and chief, frontier merchant, railroad and turnpike builder, Civil War leader of combined Cherokee and white Appalachian forces, state senator, and more, William Holland Thomas (1805-1893) was arguably the dominant historical figure in Western North Carolina during the 19th century. In retrospect, it’s surprising that no book-length account of his life appeared for nearly a century after his death. That situation was remedied in 1990 with the publication by the University of Tennessee Press of a 205-page biography, Confederate Colonel and Cherokee Chief: The Life of William Holland Thomas, by E. Stanly Godbolt Jr., and Mattie U. Russell.

Godbolt, a professor of history at Mississippi State University, explained in a preface that the co-authorship, which produced this book, “springs from a professional asssociation and warm friendship that lasted for almost a score of years.” Godbolt met Mattie Russell while “completing graduate studies at Duke University in 1970. By 1956, when Mattie had completed her dissertation on the life and times of William Holland Thomas, she was already immovably set on the path that led to her long, busy, and distinguished career as curator of manuscripts in the library at Duke. In 1981, as she approached retirement, she invited me to become her co-author for a biography of Thomas. She contributed her dated dissertation and the notes and materials she had collected; my task was to expand and bring the research up to date and to write the manuscript. Before her death on May 4, 1988, Mattie discussed all of the new research that I had completed and the outline for the entire book ...”

Despite the relative brevity of Godbolt’s biography, it did provide the first coherent overview of Thomas’ life and varied endeavors.

It was very much a life of Thomas rather than a life and times. As brevity and conciseness is generally a virtue in things written - especially in this age of “psychobiographies” - we can be grateful for the clarity of the portrait he provides. Godbolt noted that “Thomas’ life divides into three major stages: his work to protect the Eastern Cherokees from being removed West against their will, his service as colonel in the Confederate Army, and his career as developer and capitalist on the Southern frontier.”

One of the most interesting accounts for Indian and white residents alike here in Western North Carolina is provided by Godbolt in the third chapter, “Let My People Stay,” which considers the forced removal of the Cherokees from their lands. Anyone at all familiar with the complex range of contradictory accounts of the Tsali episode has to appreciate Godbolt’s adroit handling of the materials. In just over two pages of text, he gives a narrative that portrays the capture and executions of Tsali and his family members that does justice to the mixed motives of all the parties involved. It’s not a pretty episode for Thomas, the U.S. Army, or for some of the Cherokee participants who tracked the Tsali group down and executed them, but it has the ring of authenticity.

Thomas’ love affair with Sarah Jane Burney Love (he was 51 and she 24 when they married), his often wrong-headed schemes and escapades during the the Civil War, and other aspects of a long life are similarly brought into focus. The account of his later years during which he spent much time at the Western Insane Asylum (present-day Broughton Hospital) - while not sentimentally overdone - are touching. Through the years, I have had an ongoing interest in Cherokee history, especially the so-called “Civilization and Removal” era of 1800-1838, the origins of the Eastern Band of Cherokees, and the Tsali episode. Despite Thomas’ supposed lapses (financial and otherwise) in handling Cherokee affairs later in the century, the following catch-phrase has for some time been my firm conviction: “No William Holland Thomas, no remnant Eastern Band of Cherokees here in WNC.” Cherokee scholar John R. Finger put it this way in an essay titled “Impact of Removal” in the collection Cherokee Removal:
Before and After (University of Georgia Press, 1991), edited by Western Carolina University historian William L. Anderson: “It is fashionable today to attack him (Thomas) for various real and alleged quirks and irregularities, but it is difficult to conceive of how the Cherokees could have stayed in western North Carolina without his steadfast assistance over such a long period.” Accordingly, when the renovated Museum of the Cherokee Indian opened to the public in the late 1990s, it was gratifying to see Thomas’ role recognized in a more substantial manner than had previously been the instance.

Thomas’ role in the Civil War is chronicled in Vernon H. Crow’s Storm in the Mountains: Thomas’ Confederate Legion of Cherokee Indians and Mountaineers (Press of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, 1982), a must read for anyone ven remotely interested in the Civil War and this region’s involvement therein. One of the most unusual American fighting units ever assembled, Thomas’ Legion marched and fought in WNC, east Tennessee, and were decimated in Jubal Early’s infamous Shenandoah Valley Campaign in 1864. As General Jubal A. Early is an ancestor of mine, I had heard much of this campaign while growing up in Virginia, where the Civil War is still being replayed in hopes of a different outcome. But I had not known about the Thomas’ Legion’s participation until reading Crow’s fine account. As part of a combined force under the command of General Robert Vance, Thomas’ Legion crossed the Smokies during the winter of 1862. Vance was seeking to link up with Confederate forces in Tennessee in order to withstand imminent incursions by the Union Army. The road also provided access to Alum Cave, where mineral salts could be mined for use in making gunpowder at an arsenal in North Carolina. Reading about this crossing boggles the imagination every time I return to accounts provided by Vernon Crow, John Finger, William L. Trotter, and John P. Arthur.

Crow’s rendering begins with one of the great understatements of all time in its opening sentence: “Crossing the Smokies in the dead of winter, without decent roads, was not easy.” (To be considered in detail next week.) For those interested in locating sites relating to WNC historical figures, a drive of about 1.5 miles east down the Thomas Cove Road from Whitter along the south side of the Tuckaseigee River will carry you past Will Thomas’ old homesite. Look for a house up on a knoll under several large oaks surrounded by white fencing. The Robert Varner family - present owners of the property - think that some of the older portions toward the rear of the house may have been part of the original Thomas structure, which may have burned in the 1890s. The land is located in the river bottom area where the ancient Cherokee village of Stekoa was situated. Accordingly, Will Thomas and his mother named the place Stekoa Fields when they first located there in 1839.

Godbold noted that, “In a rugged Southern mountainous area where slavery was not as important as it was in the tidewater South, Thomas became one of the largest slavehoders in the region. He owned fifty at the time of the emancipation in 1865 .... Thomas had some feeling for the slaves as human beings.
Once he bought seven slaves, accepting the condition that the family would stay together. There are very few records of his selling slaves, and apparently he did not attempt to make a profit in the slave trade .... He allowed his slaves to attend Indian religious camp meetings, and he provided a burial ground near Stekoa Fields for those who died .... James Terrell said that in 1856, Stekoa Fields and the 1,000 adjoining acres were valued at $5,000.”

(George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 287713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com)

 

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