outside their nation. Although adopted as Yonaguska's son, Thomas was still considered "white" under the law and could legally buy land; he could also allow the Cherokee to live on "his" property. Purchased for the use of the Cherokee, his land was the basis of Qualla Boundary. It is now the territory of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, a federally recognized tribe. Death Shortly before his death in April 1839, Yonaguska was carried into the town house at Soco, where he gave a last talk to his people. The old man commended Thomas to them as their chief and warned them against ever leaving their own country. Wrapping his blanket around him, he quietly lay back and died. Yonaguska was buried beside Soco Creek, about a mile below the old Macedonia mission, with a mound of stones to mark the spot. References Sources Blankenship, Bob. Cherokee Roots, Volume 1: Eastern Cherokee Rolls. (Cherokee: Bob Blankenship, 1992). Brown, John P. Old Frontiers: The Story of the Cherokee Indians from Earliest Times to the Date of Their Removal to the West, 1838. (Kingsport: Southern Publishers, 1938). Ehle, John. The Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. (New York: Doubleday, 1989). Finger, John R. The Eastern Band of Cherokees 1819-1900. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984). Lumpkin, Wilson. The Removal of the Cherokee Indians from Georgia. (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1907). Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee. (Nashville: Charles and Randy Elder-Booksellers, 1982). Smithsonian Institution, Mooney's American Bureau of Ethnology Records, Photograph of Katalsta & Ewi Katalsta, daughter & granddaughter of Yonaguska/Yanaguski. Hicks, James R. "Cherokee Lineages," Register Report of Drowning Bear Virginia Moore Carney, Eastern Band Cherokee Women - Cultural Persistence in Their Letters and Speeches, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005 Donal F. Lindsey, Indians At Hampton Institute 1877-1923, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995 Principal Chiefs of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Native American people from North Carolina 1759 births 1839 deaths 18th-century Native Americans Native American temperance activists Cherokee Nation people (1794–1907) 19th-century Native Americans People from Anson County, North Carolina