Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of White Path of Turnip Town
White Path, also written as Whitepath or White-path, is one of the most important Cherokee leaders tied to the mountain country around Ellijay, Georgia. His Cherokee name appears in sources as Nunnatsunega, Nunnatsunnega, or Nunna-tsune-ga. James Mooney translated the name as “White-path,” and connected it to the symbolic language of white or peaceful paths in Cherokee ceremonial speech.
White Path lived at Turnip Town, also known as Turnip Mine Town, near present-day Ellijay in Gilmer County. His story belongs to the Coosawattee and Ellijay country, but it also reaches into Cherokee national politics, the religious and political disputes of the 1820s, the pressure of Georgia expansion, and the Trail of Tears.
A Cherokee Leader From the Ellijay Mountains
The Ellijay country was not a side note in Cherokee history. The National Park Service study of Cherokee removal from Georgia describes Ellijay as a Cherokee settlement known by some form of elatse yi, meaning fresh green vegetation, and places it within the Coosawattee District of the Cherokee Nation in the early nineteenth century. Ellijay stood at the junction of the Ellijay and Cartecay rivers, where those streams form the Coosawattee River, an important waterway through a region where many Cherokees lived.
Other Cherokee settlements in the area included Board Town, Mountain Town, Turnip Town, Cartecay, and Cherry Log. The same NPS study notes that 1836 evaluations counted twenty Cherokee families with improvements at Mountain Town, ten at Turnip Town, including White Path, and five on the Ellijay River. The report also warns that many improvements were never evaluated, so the recorded numbers likely understate how many Cherokee people lived in and were removed from the Ellijay area.
White Path came from this mountain world. Sarah H. Hill, writing in Southern Spaces, identifies him as Nunnatsunega, a distinguished warrior, War of 1812 veteran, resident of Turnip Mine Town near Ellijay, and leading spokesman for the mountain settlements. Hill’s description helps explain why White Path mattered beyond one town. He represented a conservative Cherokee mountain population that worried missionaries, Georgia officials, and federal authorities because it remained deeply attached to older Cherokee lifeways and strongly opposed removal.
White Path and the Traditionalist Movement
White Path is often remembered through the phrase “White Path’s Rebellion,” but that label can make the movement sound simpler than it was. He was not merely resisting change for its own sake. He was part of a broader Cherokee argument over law, religion, land, sovereignty, and survival.
Mooney’s early account says White Path became alarmed by the rapid spread of Christianity, written law, and “the white man’s ways.” According to Mooney, White Path called for rejection of the new constitution, rejection of Christianity, and a return to older Cherokee law and custom. Mooney also states that his followers were called “Red-sticks” by whites, a term that carried older associations with Creek resistance.
Modern scholarship gives the movement more context. Hill describes White Path using the Ellijay townhouse in the 1820s to speak against Cherokee departure from tradition. His opposition led to his removal from the Cherokee National Council in 1825, and by 1827 he had gathered enough support to assemble an alternative council in Ellijay with representatives from seven of the eight Cherokee districts.
That matters because White Path’s movement was not only local protest. It was a serious Cherokee political dispute. It showed that Cherokee people were debating how to defend themselves in a world where American missionaries, Georgia officials, federal agents, and land speculators all pressed against Cherokee sovereignty in different ways.
A Return to Cherokee National Politics
White Path did not remain outside national Cherokee politics. Mooney says he was deposed from his council seat, later submitted, and was reinstated. The Cherokee Phoenix gives a primary-source window into that return. In October 1828, the paper published the members of the Cherokee National Council and listed White Path under the Coosewatee district.
That same public record shows the complexity of his life. White Path could oppose certain reforms and still serve inside the Cherokee Nation’s political structure. He could defend tradition and still appear in the national council at a moment when the Cherokee Nation was using newspapers, constitutional government, petitions, and diplomacy to defend its land.
In 1830, the Cherokee Phoenix printed the “Address of the Committee and Council of the Cherokee Nation in General Council convened” to the people of the United States. The address opposed Georgia’s pressure and defended Cherokee rights under treaties with the United States. White Path’s name appears among the signers.
That signature is important. It places White Path not only as a Turnip Town leader or traditionalist speaker, but as a Cherokee national figure attached to one of the central public arguments against removal.
Georgia, Ellijay, and the Road to Removal
The pressure around Ellijay grew during the 1830s. Georgia extended its claimed authority over Cherokee lands, surveyed and distributed Cherokee territory by lottery, and created new counties from the Cherokee Nation. Hill notes that Ellijay became the Gilmer County seat in 1834, even while Cherokee sovereignty remained the central issue in national politics.
The Treaty of New Echota, signed by a minority faction without approval from the Cherokee National Council, became the legal instrument the United States used to force removal. Hill explains that most Cherokees refused to leave voluntarily while Principal Chief John Ross continued protesting the treaty. Between May 26 and June 15, 1838, United States soldiers rounded up and removed Cherokee citizens from Georgia.
Ellijay became one of the places where removal moved from policy to force. Fort Hetzel was established near Ellijay, and the NPS study connects its military occupation to the fall of 1837. The same study says White Path lived just north of Ellijay and later died on the Trail of Tears near Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
White Path on the Trail of Tears
White Path’s final chapter came during the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokee Nation’s Remember the Removal site says Chief Whitepath was part of the Elijah Hicks Detachment, which left in the first week of October 1838, and that he served as assistant conductor. By the time the detachment reached Nashville, he had become ill.
The National Park Service page for Port Royal State Historic Park gives a closely related account. It says Elijah Hicks wrote to Chief John Ross from Port Royal and described the people as unwilling and slow to prepare each morning because they were moving “not from choice” toward an unknown region. The same NPS page says Hicks mentioned Chief White Path’s poor health and that White Path died days later in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
Cherokee Nation records say Whitepath died while camped along the south fork of the Little River outside Hopkinsville. He was buried in Latham Cemetery, where Fly Smith, another Cherokee leader who died on the removal route, was also buried.
Mooney preserved another memory of the burial. He wrote that White Path died near Hopkinsville and that his people buried him by the roadside with a box over the grave and poles with streamers around it so other detachments coming behind could see the place and remember him.
Today, the Trail of Tears Commemorative Park in Hopkinsville is a certified site on the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. The National Park Service identifies it as the location of the graves of two prominent Cherokee leaders, Chief Whitepath and Fly Smith, who died there while traveling the Trail in 1838.
Why White Path’s Story Still Matters
White Path’s life stretches across several major chapters of Cherokee history. He belonged to the Ellijay and Turnip Town mountain world. He fought as a warrior and became a political leader. He resisted religious and legal changes that he believed threatened Cherokee tradition. He later returned to national Cherokee politics and signed a public address defending Cherokee treaty rights and homeland. Then, in old age and illness, he died on the Trail of Tears far from the mountain settlement that had shaped him.
His story is not only about resistance. It is about Cherokee debate, Cherokee sovereignty, and the difficulty of survival under pressure from every side. White Path stood for a mountain Cherokee world that outsiders often misunderstood, feared, or dismissed. Remembering him brings Turnip Town, Ellijay, Coosawattee, Port Royal, and Hopkinsville into one connected Appalachian and Cherokee history.
Sources & Further Reading
Cherokee Phoenix. “General Council of the Cherokee Nation.” October 22, 1828. Western Carolina University Cherokee Phoenix Digital Collection. https://www.wcu.edu/library/DigitalCollections/CherokeePhoenix/Vol1/no34/general-council-of-the-cherokee-nation-page-1-column-1b-5b-and-page-2-column-1a-2a.html
Cherokee Phoenix. “Address of the Committee and Council of the Cherokee Nation in General Council Convened to the People of the United States.” July 24, 1830. Western Carolina University Cherokee Phoenix Digital Collection. https://www.wcu.edu/library/DigitalCollections/CherokeePhoenix/Vol3/no14/indians-page-1-column-1b-page-2-column-2a.html
United States Congress. “Memorial of the Cherokee Delegation, Red Clay Council Ground, August 8, 1837.” U.S. Congressional Serial Set, House Document No. 99. Washington, DC, 1837. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/SERIALSET-00325_00_00-021-0099-0000/pdf/SERIALSET-00325_00_00-021-0099-0000.pdf
Henderson, Daniel. 1835 Census of Cherokee Indians, Also Known as the Henderson Roll: Georgia Section. 1835. Transcription copy. https://www.jswaim.com/family/robinson/cherokee/1935%20henderson%20roll%20cherokee%20NC_TN-2064389.pdf
Museum of the Cherokee People. “Hicks, Setemake, White Path, and R. Taylor. Autograph Letter Signed.” Archival record, 1987.126.001. https://cherokeemuseum.pastperfectonline.com/archive/E2F2BD9F-7754-4193-9D52-355974405172
Cherokee Nation. “Whitepath and Fly Smith Graves.” Remember the Removal. https://rtr.cherokee.org/sites-on-the-trail/whitepath-and-fly-smith-graves/
Hill, Sarah H. “Cherokee Removal Scenes: Ellijay, Georgia, 1838.” Southern Spaces, August 23, 2012. https://southernspaces.org/2012/cherokee-removal-scenes-ellijay-georgia-1838/
National Park Service. Cherokee Removal from Georgia. Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. https://www.nps.gov/trte/learn/historyculture/upload/Cherokee-Removal-from-Georgia-508.pdf
National Park Service. “Port Royal State Historic Park.” Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. https://www.nps.gov/places/port-royal-state-historic-park.htm
National Park Service. “Trail of Tears Commemorative Park, Hopkinsville, KY.” Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. https://www.nps.gov/places/trail-of-tears-commemorative-park-hopkinsville-ky.htm
Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee. Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1900. Project Gutenberg edition. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45634/45634-h/45634-h.htm
McLoughlin, William G. “Cherokee Anti-Mission Sentiment, 1824–1828.” Ethnohistory 21, no. 4 (1974): 361–370. https://www.jstor.org/stable/481149
McLoughlin, William G. Cherokees and Missionaries, 1789–1839. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. https://archive.org/details/cherokeesmission0000mclo
Perdue, Theda. “Traditionalism in the Cherokee Nation.” American Indian Quarterly 6, no. 3/4 (1982): 315–322. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40580890
Leavelle, Tracy Neal. “Native American Religions in the Early South.” Journal of Southern Religion 14 (2012). https://jsr.fsu.edu/issues/vol14/leavelle.html
Thornton, Russell. “Boundary Dissolution and Revitalization Movements.” Ethnohistory 40, no. 3 (1993): 359–383. https://www.jstor.org/stable/481860
Champagne, Duane. “Cherokee Social Movements: A Response to Thornton.” American Indian Quarterly 9, no. 2 (1985): 235–242. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2095347
Yeates, W. S., S. W. McCallie, and Francis P. King. A Preliminary Report on a Part of the Gold Deposits of Georgia. Geological Survey of Georgia Bulletin No. 4-A. Atlanta: Geo. W. Harrison, State Printer, 1896. https://dlg.usg.edu/record/dlg_ggpd_s-ga-bm500-pg4-bb1-bno-p-b4-ha
Jones, S. P. Second Report on the Gold Deposits of Georgia. Geological Survey of Georgia Bulletin No. 19. Atlanta: State Printer, 1909. https://dlg.usg.edu/record/dlg_ggpd_s-ga-bm500-pg4-bb1-bno-p19
Trail of Tears Commemorative Park and Heritage Center. “Trail of Tears Commemorative Park.” https://www.trailoftearshopkinsville.org/
Author Note: White Path’s story is one of those Appalachian stories where the place names still carry memory long after the people were forced away. I wanted to treat him as more than a footnote to removal, because Turnip Town, Ellijay, and Hopkinsville all preserve parts of his life.