Charles Renatus Hicks (December 23, 1767 – January 20, 1827) was one of the most important Cherokee leaders in the early 19th century; together with James Vann and Major Ridge, he was one of a triumvirate of younger chiefs urging the tribe to acculturate to European-American ways and supported a Moravian mission school to educate the Cherokee. In 1827, he succeeded to the office of Principal Chief when his predecessor, Pathkiller, died in office, only to die himself two weeks later.
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He was born December 23, 1767 in the town of Tomotley near the Hiwassee River at its confluence with the Tennessee River in present-day eastern Tennessee. Hicks was the son of Nan-Ye-Hi, a half-blood Cherokee woman, and a white trader named Nathan Hicks. As the Cherokee were a matrilineal culture, the children of Nan-Ye-Hi like her belonged to the Paint Clan, the . They were fully assimilated, as they grew up within the Nation. At the time, both the Cherokee and European traders thought that such strategic alliances benefited them.
Nan-Ye-Hi and her brother Gunrod were the children of a Cherokee woman and a Swiss immigrant, Jacob Conrad. Gunrod married a Cherokee woman and had several children: Hair Conrad, Rattlinggourd, Terrapin Head, Young Wolf, and Quatie.
Charles Hicks married Nancy as his principal wife. She was the daughter of Chief Broom of Broomstown, located on the northeastern border of present-day Alabama, where the Cherokee had moved under pressure from the Creek and British. The village was later abandoned. (As a successful Cherokee, Hicks would take other wives, according to tribal tradition.)
Bilingual, Hicks served as interpreter to U.S. Indian Agent Return Jonathan Meigs, Sr. (1740-1823), who was agent for more than two decades to the Cherokee in Tennessee/western North Carolina, from 1801 to his death. Hicks also acted as treasurer for the Cherokee Nation.
When the Creek, traditional enemies, became divided over acculturation and land issues, he fought with United States troops and southern militia under General Andrew Jackson against the Creek Red Sticks in the 1814 Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Allied with the other former warriors James Vann and Major Ridge, Hicks was one of the most influential younger leaders in the Nation (one of the triumvirate) during the period after the Chickamauga wars to just past the first quarter of the 19th century. They supported acculturation and adoption of some European-American ways.
When Hicks accepted Christianity, he was baptized on April 8, 1813 by Moravian missionaries as Charles Renatus ("Born Again") Hicks.[1] Extremely well-read and acculturated, he had one of the largest personal libraries in North America at the time, public or private. In an 1826 letter to John Ross, who was being groomed as a future Principal Chief, Charles Hicks told about the history of the Cherokee tribe, relating events from his youth, including his encounters with the chiefs Attacullaculla and Oconostota, and the early European trader Cornelius Dougherty, as well as stories of traditions.
In 1817, Hicks was elected Second Principal Chief under Pathkiller.[2] After the "revolt of the young chiefs" two years later, partly over land deals, Hicks became the de facto head of government, with Pathkiller serving as a figurehead. When Pathkiller died in January 1827, Hicks succeeded him as Principal Chief, the first with any European ancestry to serve in that position.
He died on January 20, 1827, two weeks after assuming office. His younger brother William Abraham Hicks served as interim Principal Chief, but John Ross, as President of the National Committee, and Major Ridge, as Speaker of the National Council, were more powerful at the time. The tribe ended its traditional government and formed a constitutional republic.[2] In 1828 John Ross was elected as the new Principal Chief; popular with full-bloods, who outnumbered the mixed race members by a three to one margin, he was repeatedly re-elected and served in this capacity until his death in 1867.[2]
| Preceded by Pathkiller |
Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation 1827 |
Succeeded by William Hicks |