Elias Boudinot (Gallegina “Buck” Watie)

Born Gallegina “Buck” Watie to a prominent Cherokee family in 1804, Elias Boudinot was, like the Cherokee Nation itself, caught between the need to assimilate with encroaching colonists and the desire to maintain Cherokee sovereignty and identity. Educated through age seventeen in the Spring Place Moravian missionary school, Watie met a man named Elias Boudinot, president of the American Bible Society and former member of the Continental Congress, while en route to study at another mission school in Cornwall, Connecticut. Out of respect, Watie adopted Boudinot’s name. While in Connecticut, Watie, now Boudinot, married a white woman, Harriet Gold, despite strong opposition....