Colonel William Holland Thomas was born in a log house on Raccoon Creek about two miles east of Mount Prospect, later called Waynesville, North Carolina.

William never knew his father.

At a trading post he quickly became acquainted with the Cherokees, learned their language, and was befriended by Chief Yonaguska, who adopted Thomas into his band.  Around 1820 the trading post was forced to close and, since it was unable to pay Thomas they gave him a set of law books.

At the time there were no bar exams to pass, and anyone who read law was allowed to practice.   Thomas soon became well-versed in frontier law and was asked to become the Cherokees’ legal representative in 1831.  When the U.S. Government began removing and relocating the Cherokee to Oklahoma in 1838, Thomas negotiated a deal allowing 60 Cherokee families the right to remain on their land. So important and integral had Thomas become to the Cherokee that one year later, in 1839, a dying Yonaguska designated Thomas his successor as Tribal Chief.

He initially raised a company of 200 Cherokee that called themselves the Junaluska Zouaves.  As the local residents were sometimes referred to as “Highlanders,” Thomas’ men soon became known as the “Highland Rangers."   By late 1862, Thomas was in command of a mounted regiment that fluctuated in size from 1,500 to 2,000 men. They were officially designated “1st Regiment, Thomas Legion.” 


They were successful but when a  leader, a full-blooded Cherokee, was mortally wounded members of the company scalped several wounded or dead Union soldiers.   Thomas feared for the reputation of the Cherokee, as he did not want his people seen as barbaric. The scalps were sent to be buried with the soldiers they originally came from.  In 1863 the Knoxville Register wrote, “an Indian from Thomas’s Legion always executes an order with religious fidelity.  A bounty of $5,000 was promised  for his head.

As men died—on battlefields, in hospitals, in prisons, and on the lam—the home region became grim. Families starved. Deserters took refuge. Western North Carolina became “The Civil War within the Civil War.”

The Legion participated in the last skirmish of the war in North Carolina before surrendering at Waynesville in May 1865.   This region was the most inaccessible portion of the Confederacy.   There was no telegraph system in the entire area and the mountains formed natural barriers to transportation.  On May 6, 1865, Union Colonel William C. Bartlett's Federal Mounted Infantry were raiding, pillaging, burning homes and engaging in other activities to undermine the economic base of the area.  They were attacked east of  Waynesville by a detachment of rebels from the Thomas Legion of Highlanders, who had been summoned for help by locals.  Colonel Thomas and his men controlled the mountains surrounding Waynesville, and during the night built hundreds of bonfires so it would appear to Union troops that thousands of Indians and Confederates were camped there.  To ensure the right effect, the Cherokees punctuated the nights with “chilling warhoops” and “hideous yells.”

The following morning Thomas and about 20 Cherokees entered Waynesville to demand the Yankees’ surrender.  Bartlett called for a peace conference.  Twenty Cherokees from Thomas’ Legion came to the meeting, “stripped to the waist and painted and feathered in good old style".   At the beginning of the meeting Colonel Thomas threatened to "...turn his Indians upon the Yankee Regiment and have them all scalped."    After a Union officer stated that Lee had surrendered a month earlier and a Yankee surrender to Thomas would only bring in more Union troops, Colonel Thomas reluctantly agreed to lay down his arms.   Fewer than 100 members of the Thomas Legion returned to their families in Western North Carolina.

In 1867, Thomas was put to bed at the North Carolina Insane Asylum in Raleigh.