Tribe wants to name former chief as new Jackson County namesake
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reservation in Oklahoma. Disease and starvation killed thousands of them. Jackson County’s namesake is an insult to the descendents of the Cherokee people who managed, despite Jackson’s best efforts, to remain and thrive in their native land, Chief Sneed said. But the tribe doesn’t want the county to change its name — it just wants it to honor a different Jackson. The idea was first proposed by Cherokee One Feather reporter Scott McKie in a July 12 editorial, and it’s gained enough momentum to earn unified support from both the chief and Tribal Council.
‘A GOOD MAN’ Chief Jackson was born on May 29, 1923, and got his education in Cherokee’s schools before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, prompting him to join the U.S. Navy. “As far as his military record, all I know is that he served honorably in the Navy and that he was in the Pacific. He didn’t talk much about it,” said Richard S. Sneed — Chief Sneed’s father — who was just 3 years old when his mother Sally Sneed married Walter Jackson. Sneed’s own father served in the Army, but he died in Germany when Sneed was just 1 year old. His mother married Jackson two years later — he was the only father Sneed ever knew. “He was good to me and good to my brother,” said Sneed. “He made us what we are today. He taught you respect. He was a good man.” When the war ended, Jackson came home and served his community. According to the 2007 book A Cherokee Encyclopedia by Robert J. Conley, he was named manager of the Oconaluftee Indian Village for the Cherokee Historical Association in 1951 before going on to serve as the tribe’s chief of police and then head of community services. He sat on Tribal Council for 12 years and served as vice chief for four before winning the 1967 election for principal chief. “He did a good job with the tribe,” said Sneed. “He secured a lot of grants back when there wasn’t a lot of money to be had for the tribe.”
Walter S. Jackson was principal chief from 1967 until his death in 1971. Family photo Back then, everyone in Cherokee was poor. Jackson worked hard all his life. If you didn’t “you’d starve to death,” Sneed said. Even serving in elected office wasn’t enough to bestow financial security. According to a 1970 New York Times article, Jackson’s salary as principal chief was just $6,600. That 500-word piece reported that Tribal Council had asked Jackson to resign from his post, citing negligence of fiscal duties and unauthorized out-of-state trips at the tribe’s expense. Ten of the 12 council members signed a resolution asking for Jackson’s resignation, the story said, but Jackson told the reporter that the charges were false and that he had no intention of resigning. Jackson had gotten complaints about the amount of traveling he did, said Sneed, but all that traveling brought in the grants at a
time when the tribe sorely needed money. According to Conley, Jackson was instrumental in developing the Cherokee Boys Club, improving reservation roads, reopening the tribal rolls, securing a new gym and elementary school and establishing a new hospital. Jackson’s nickname was “Bull” — he could be a bit of a jokester when he wanted to be, said Sneed, but he was never a pushover. “He was pretty tough, I’ll just tell you that,” he said. “He wasn’t afraid to have a little scrape every once in a while.” He was a likeable man, said Sneed, someone who could talk to all different kinds of people — including government officials with control of federal purse strings — with-
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BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER he 18th chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians was a lot of things — a World War II veteran, a dedicated father and stepfather, a leader in tribal politics — and if county commissioners OK a proposal from Tribal Council, “namesake of Jackson County” could soon be added to Walter S. Jackson’s list of accomplishments. “I don’t think that I’m alone in saying that it is an affront to me as a Cherokee citizen that half of our boundary is in a county named after the president who signed the Indian Removal Act and saw our ancestors as inferior and put in place a policy that was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Native Americans,” Principal Chief Richard Sneed said during the Oct. 29 Annual Council meeting where the resolution containing the proposal was presented and unanimously approved. Formed in 1871 from parts of Haywood and Macon counties, Jackson County — like countless towns, counties and schools across the country — takes its name from Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States. Born to Irish immigrant parents near the state line of North and South Carolina, Andrew Jackson was a hero of the War of 1812 and a popular two-term president. However, he’s also known for his cruelty and dehumanization of the country’s Native American population. In 1830, he famously signed the Indian Removal Act into law, legislation that paved the way for the forcible removal of multiple Native American tribes from their homeland. For the Cherokee, this effort culminated in the infamous Trail of Tears, the 5,000-mile route along which tens of thousands of Cherokee people were marched toward their government-approved
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