William Holland Thomas

William Holland Thomas was a white lawyer, merchant and politician who was adopted into the Cherokee community and became a trusted associate of the chief Yonaguska. He represented the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in land and legal matters and later served in the North Carolina legislature.

During the American Civil War he raised Thomas’s Legion for the Confederacy, after which financial and mental-health difficulties overshadowed his final years. William Holland Thomas died in Morganton.

Charles Frazier’s Thirteen Moons uses William Holland Thomas as one of the principal historical models for its fictional Will Cooper, whose life among the Cherokee moves from trading and law into land negotiations and the struggle against removal. Hourly History’s The Cherokee supplies the broader historical context for the same world, including the pressures of United States expansion, removal policy and the survival of Cherokee communities in the southeast with which Thomas became closely associated.