William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

[266] treat the Pale-faces as enemies — to reject their offers of an exchange of lands, and stand out against them as long as his braves could draw a bow and pull a scalp. A second chief, who had assumed the name of Adair, became the leader of such Cherokees as wished to try the Pale-face customs — to accept the new homes, to give up hunting game, and cultivate the land. One party was feudal, the other party radical. Ross was for war paint, cattle lifting, common property, and despotic chiefs; Adair for soap and water, settled homesteads, personal property, and equal laws.

Two brothers, named Strong Buck and Stand Watie, were the active radical chiefs; Strong Buck the thinker, Stand Watie the soldier of their band. Adair was but a nominal head. Strong Buck had been sent by Elias Boudinot, a kindly French planter, to a good school, where he had learned to read, become a Catholic, adopted the name of his French patron, and married a woman with White blood in her veins. While the tribes were moving to their new grounds, Ross and his friends were all for fighting, Boudinot and his friends were all for parleying with the Whites along the roads. As they