John Ross Cherokee Chief

      New World Celt

            Scottish

Born:Turkeytown(near Center), Alabama, October 3, 1790
Died: Washington, D.C., August 1, 1866

John Ross was the first and only elected Chief of the Cherokee Nation from the time it was formed 1828 until his death in 1866. Highly regarded for his role in leading the fight against removal and leading his people to their exile in Oklahoma.

Ross had a private tutor as a youth. Although only one-eighth Cherokee, Ross played Native American games and kept his Indian ties. Early in his life he was postmaster in Rossville, Ga. and a clerk in a trading firm. The town he founded as Rossville Landing grew much larger than it's namesake as Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Growing up with the constant raids of whites and Indians, Ross witnessed much of the brutality on the early American frontier. "Little John" served as a Lieutenant in the Creek War, fighting with many famous Americans including Sam Houston. When future president and Cherokee oppressor Andrew Jackson called the Battle of Horseshoe Bend "one of the great victories of the American frontier," losing 50 men while killing 500 Creek men, women, and children, John Ross penned the words.

Ross was viewed as astute and likable, and frequently visited Washington. After the death of James Vann, Ross joined Charles Hicks, with whom he worked, and Major Ridge as a member of the Cherokee Triumvirate.  Ross, one of the richest men in North Georgia before 1838 had a number of ventures including a 200-acre farm and owned a number of slaves. He would not speak Cherokee in council because he felt his command of the language was weak.

After the death of Charles Hicks, and others in the early 1820's, settlers believed that the Cherokee time was short. Ross and others decided to make legal moves to prevent the forced removal including organizing the Cherokee tribe as a nation, with its own Constitution, patterned after the Constitution of the United States of America. As president of the Constitutional Convention that convened in the summer of 1827 he was the obvious choice for Principal Chief in the first elections in 1828. He held this post until his death in 1866. Ridge, his close friend and ally, would serve the last years in Georgia as "counselor," for lack of a better word to describe the roll.

Over the first 10 years of his rule he fought the white man not weapons but with words. As the encroachment of the settlers grew, he turned to the press to make his case. When the Land Lottery of 1832 divided Cherokee land among the whites he filed suit in the white man's courts and won, only to see the ruling go unenforced. His old friend Major Ridge and the Treaty Party signed away the Cherokee land in 1835. Ross got 16,000 signatures of Cherokees to show the party did not speak for a majority of the tribe, but Andrew Jackson forced the treaty through Congress. He lost his first wife, Quatie, on the "Trail Where They Cried," or as it is more commonly known, the Trail of Tears.

A New World Celt, John descended from the tradition of the Highland Clan Ross and the magnificent Cherokee Nation.