Author Debra Yates explains how an important woman in Native American history, her seventh-great-grandmother, Nancy Ward, crossed paths with major figures like Daniel Boone, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. Hear Debra's full interview in Episode 53 of Let's Talk Legacy.
Tell us a little bit about Nancy Ward, when she lived, what the state of the Cherokee Nation was doing during that time, and how she was seen amongst her contemporaries.
Well, when she was born, it was, you know, the 1740s. You know, every move you made, every breath you took, there was danger all around. And her birth had been foretold. There was a prophecy that there would be a girl child born to the wolf clan that would rise to lead her people to greatness. They were kind of waiting on that prophecy to be fulfilled, I would say.
And at a very young age, things started happening around Nanyahi that signaled that she might very well be that child. So as she was being brought up in the Cherokee culture, of course, it's oral tradition. It's a lot of talk and it's a lot of telling the stories and between each other, not writing them down. When
you know, she became of age, you know, they knew that she was the fulfilling of that legend, that it was her. And so she was taught from a very young age, you know, things that maybe most girls wouldn't be in on being taught, you know, different languages. She had
an aunt, her name was Lucy Ward, that was a lady-in-waiting to King George II's wife, who fell in love with Alcanna Stowe when he went to visit England on a ship called the Fox with his brother at Akula Kula. And she came home with him, became his wife. But she looked at Nancy kind of like she was her own, you know, prodigy to help, you know, teach things to.
And, you know, the smarter that she was, the better the chance that, number one, that she would survive. And, you know, the country was being invaded from basically everywhere. The English, the Spanish, you know, everybody wanted a piece of America. They wanted the wood. They wanted the minerals. They wanted everything that they could glean from from these lands.
And they didn't care who they had to take it from in order to do such. She was just born at the right time and in the right place. And, you know, she knew, you know, the likes of Daniel Boone and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, you know, chased her around a desk or two and George Washington as well.
So she had ties with Daniel Boone? Oh, yes.
Nancy sold Kentucky to the Transylvania company who Daniel Boone was a representative for. They had, I think, a really good relationship and they were able to hammer out the sale of literally the estate.
She was connected with all these presidents and famous people. Well, how did she get that much stature?
Well, she was negotiating lots of treaties. She negotiated, you know, with different tribes throughout the Northeast that allowed, you know, George Washington actually to move freely through those lands. Had those treaties not been set in place, you know, we would have been a warring fraction, you know, with the early colonialist
I kind of, you know, went back and forth with the Smithsonian Institute saying that, you know, I couldn't prove that Nancy Ward knew George Washington. I said, well, we know that she wrote him letters. They're almost illegible. They're basically illegible. But it's from her to President Washington.
And one of those letters was actually found in Thomas Jefferson's desk when it went to be refurbished. I want to say back in the 60s, that letter was, you know, found in his desk.