[1] Born in about 1839 near Fort Towson in the Choctaw Nation, Thompson was an infant when his family moved to what was then Mexican Texas.
Soon afterwards both of his parents died, leaving him and a brother Arthur to live with their elderly grandmother Margaret McCoy-Thompson near Fort Washita, before being sent back to Mississippi, where they were raised by their maternal grandparents.
After the Civil War, Thompson initially returned to Texas and re-established connections with extended family among the Mount Tabor Indian Community.
William C. Thompson was born on February 6, 1839, into a mixed-race family who identified primarily as Choctaw and Chickasaw but also had European-American ancestry.
Many Yowani had earlier moved away from European Americans and west into Louisiana and Texas, taking on the customs of their neighbors.
The Choctaw and Chickasaw were among the Native American tribes that had matrilineal kinship systems, and children were considered born to the mother's family for social status, inheritance and descent.
Atahobia was one of the leaders of the Yowani who moved into Texas from Louisiana in 1824 after petitioning the Mexican government for permission to settle in the province.
[7] Prior to this, Atahobia was a signatory of the Treaty of Doak's Stand in 1820, as one of the Chiefs and Headmen of the Choctaw who ceded land in Mississippi to the United States.
[8] In Texas the villages prior to 1837 were located east of the Trinity River in what was then Nacogdoches County, west of the U.S. (Louisiana) border on both the Patroon and Attoyac Bayou's.
[10] According to Dr. Irv May (Texas A & M University-College Station) and information from the Thompson-McCoy Choctaw-Chickasaw Descendants Association, William's family survived the attack on the village, and quickly fled back to the Choctaw Nation.
[3] Family speculation and the timing suggests they may have been mortally wounded in the Texians' attack, but may also have died of infectious disease, as smallpox epidemics had swept Texas and Indian Territory.
By the time of the forced removal she was living near her brother James A. McCoy in the Chickasaw Nation-East in what is now Pontotoc County, Mississippi.
[13] While a prisoner, Thompson was promoted by the Confederate government to the rank of brevet Lieutenant Colonel of a Mississippi regiment.
From Nashville, Thompson was sent to Camp Chase, Ohio, then to Baltimore, Maryland, and finally by steamboat to Richmond, Virginia, in a prisoner exchange of officers.
With the opening a new lumber mill by his distant cousin John Martin Thompson, William moved with other maternal family members to the newly organized Trinity County, living at Centralia.
[3] William Thompson's intelligence and leadership experience was valued not only by the Texas Choctaws and related Chickasaws but the Cherokees and the neighboring McIntosh Party Creek Indians as well.
The Mount Tabor Indian Community, later known as the Texas Cherokees and Associate Bands, was led by John Adair "Jack" Bell[16] (1806–1860) who along with his brother Devereaux Jarrett Bell (known by his Indian name of Chicken Trotter)[17] and members`of the Starr, Harnage, Watie and other prominent Cherokee families.
By 1844, following the Treaty of Birds Fort,[18] there were two villages, one near the Cherokee band under the leadership of Chicken Trotter (Devireaux Jarrett Bell, 1817–1866),[17] in what would become the Mt.
[20] William and John were elected by family members who had relocated into the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations as their formal representatives.
Oil was discovered on Martin's land in Texas, making him a wealthy man worth more than $200,000 at the time of his death.
He wanted to be counted as a citizen to participate in the allotments of Choctaw communal lands that was to be conducted under the Dawes Act, to extinguish Indian claims in preparation for Oklahoma statehood.
He was the most celebrated leader among the Texas Choctaws in IT as he helped many, many of his family and descendants become re-established in the western Chickasaw Nation.