John Ross or Little White Bird, son of a Scottish immigrant and a Cherokee mother, was Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 until his death on this day in Washington, D.C. His leadership spanned a remarkable period for his tribe that included the forced emigration of the "Trial of Tears," the long quest for compensation, the recovery of the tribe to some prosperity, and finally, its ill-fated and divisive alliance with the Confederate States in 1861. It was while he was negotiating, with some difficulty and dissent from other Cherokee leaders, a permanent Reconstruction Treaty with President Johnson's administration that he died. He was seventy-five years old. (By John Osborne)
"Ross, John or Kooweskowie," The American Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1866 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1873), 678.
