Chief Junaluska

Information provided by Jim Hicks
a fourth generation grandson of Chief Junaluska

First known as Gulkalaski, Chief Junaluska was later given the name of Tsunulahunski, but this was a bit difficult for many whites. In the diaries of Colonel William Thomas it is spelled Chunaluska, the Siler Rolls list him as Ja-ne-lus-kih, and it was spelled Junoluskee in the annals of the North Carolina General Assembly. The most accepted spelling is Junaluska from whence Mount Junaluska and Lake Junaluska get their names.

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Born in the mid 1700's near what is now Murphy, NC, Chief Junaluska was first known as Gulkalaski. He took a wife and began raising his family in the beautiful Snowbird mountains. Gulkalaski rose in the ranks of the Cherokee to become a leader of the Snowbird Clan.

During the Creek wars of 1812-1814 Gulkalaski took 500 of his Cherokee scouts to help General Andrew Jackson win the Battle of Horse Shoe Bend. Gulkalaski had sworn to his people that they would exterminate the Creeks. General Andrew Jackson was directing the frontal attack of a Creek fortification that had been built within the projection of land created by a bend in the Tallapoosa River in eastern Alabama. Major Ridge, with his Lieutenant, John Ross, were directing the Cherokee attack on the rear of the fortification but were faced with crossing the river itself. Gulkalaski and two other warriors swam the Tallapoosa River in the dark and took the Creek warriors' canoes in spite of gunfire from the Creek Indians which wounded one of the three Cherokee, an Indian named Whale. This action gave Jackson the upper hand in what had been a situation stacked against him. In the ensuing battle Gulkalaski drove his tomahawk through the skull of a Creek warrior when the Creek had General Jackson at his mercy.

When Gulkalaski returned to the Snowbird Clan he related the events of the battle, according to the Cherokee custom, at the next dance after his return. Explaining that General Jackson and Major Ridge's Cherokee regiment did not carry the battle on to eradicate the whole of the Creek Nation forever as he had promised, Gulkalaski told his story with a single word, detsinulahungu, "I tried, but could not". This was a cue to the song leader, who at once took it as the burden of his song. Thenceforth the disappointed warrior was known as Tsunulahunski, "Onee who tries, but fails".

In the 1830's, when President Andrew Jackson was directing the forced removal of the Cherokee from their native lands Chief John Ross failed to get an audience to plead their cause. Chief Ross asked Chief Tsunulahunski to make an attempt. President Jackson granted Tsunulahunski an audience and heard his plea but curtly said, "Sir, your audience is ended. There is nothing I can do for you." The doom of the Cherokee was sealed. Washington, D.C. had decreed that they must be driven West. At the forced removal, witnessing the scene before him, and with tears gushing down his cheeks Chief Tsunulahunski lifted his face toward the heavens and said, "Oh my God, if I had known at the battle of the Horse Shoe what I know now, American history would have been differently written."

Chief Tsunulahunski lead one of the seventeen contingents of Cherokee on the "Trail Where They Cried". His wife died on the Trail or shortly thereafter. Chief Tsunulahunski later returned to the Snowbird Mountains, walking all the way back to the land of the Little Tennessee. His old friend Colonel William Thomas plead Chief Tsunulahunski's case to the General Assembly of North Carolina and on 2 January, 1847 they ratified "An Act in Favor of the Cherokee Chief, Junoluskee", "who distinguished himself in the service of the United States at the battle of Horse Shoe as commander of a body of Cherokees, as well as divers other occasions during the last war with Great Britain. The Assembly awarded him full citizenship, 337 acres of land in Cherokee county, district 9, tract No. 19, and one hundred dollars.

Chief Tsunulahunski took a Cherokee wife, Ni-suh, and raised a family of two boys, Jim-my and Sic-que-yuh, and one girl, Na-lih. He died on 20 October, 1868, at over 100 years of age. His grave is on a hill in the town of Robbinsville and is marked with a memorial stone erected by the General Joseph Winston Chapter of D.A.R. in 1910.

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• John G. Burnett's story of the Removal of the Cherokee
  Private John G Burnett, Captain Abraham McClellan's Company,
  2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted Infantry

• Colonel Thomas' manuscript in the possession of H.C. Wilburn, Waynesville, North Carolina

• The Story of Lake Junaluska, Mason Crum, Piedmont Press, 1950

• Laws of the State of North Carolina, op. cit., p. 128

• Junaluska Memorial Cemetery, Cemetery Records, Graham County, North Carolina

• 1851 Siler Rolls, Census of Cherokee's east of the Mississippi

• Buffalo Town, Cherokee County, North Carolina, Family No. 15

Revised: October 07, 2008.