Chief Nimrod Jarrett Smith

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Chief Nimrod Jarrett Smith (1837-1893) was the third Principal Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. His father was the Valley River landowner Henry Smith, one of the wealthiest men in the Eastern Cherokee Nation. Chief Smith was also the grand-nephew of Stand Watie through his paternal grandmother, Sarah Susan Watie. This made him a descendant of Moytoy I, Moytoy II, Attacullaculla, Oconostota, and David Watie. He is also known by his war title, Tsaladileih (Charles the Killer).

A well-educated and well-spoken man, he was fluent in both Cherokee and English, although he had learned Cherokee as a second language. He was elected Principal Chief in 1880. He exercised unprecedented power over the Eastern Cherokee Nation. He worked actively for official U.S. government recognition for the band.^[1]

In 1887 he was host to ethnologist James Mooney during Mooney's first visit to the Eastern Band in western North Carolina. In that year Mooney observed a Green Corn Dance that became the last such ritual enacted by the tribe for over a century.^[1]

Nimrod Smith was a radical anti-assimilationist, fighting against acculturation into the white American society. However, church investigations later found that he had been engaged in an affair with a married woman and had forced his daughter to cohabit with a white trader for personal profit. These moral transgressions scandalized the Eastern Cherokee, and he was voted out of office in 1890. He died three years later, unnoticed.^{[citation needed]}