William Penn Adair

He became an attorney who served in public office both before and after the American Civil War and as a justice of their nation's court.

The family was forced to remove to Indian Territory in 1838, a process which their people called the Trail of Tears, because of the loss of their lands and the high number of deaths along the way.

[2] He was described as being "six foot and two inches in height, magnetic, logical and frankly agreeable, the ablest and most brilliant of all Cherokees.

[1] During the Civil War, Adair served in the Confederate States Army,[1] first in the First Regiment of Cherokee Mounted Volunteers, under General Stand Watie.

[5] The Confederacy had promised the nations in Indian territory that it would support an Indian-controlled state if it won the war.

He was a senator, a justice of the Cherokee Supreme Court, delegate to Washington, DC, and assistant principal chief.

"[10] The Texas Cherokees and Associate Bands was established by Adair and John Adair Bell in the early 1850s in the Mount Tabor Indian Community in Rusk County, Texas for the purposes of seeking redress over the violations of the 1836 Treaty of Bowles Village which later led to the Cherokee-Texas war in 1839 as well as later actions by Texas Cherokee leader Chicken Trotter until the Treaty of Birds Fort in 1843 that ended hostilities.

Some of these issues went back to the Ross-Ridge party feuds stemming from the Trail of Tears that had been played out during the Civil War.

However the Texas Cherokees and Associate Bands continued to pursue litigation as late as 1963 some eighty-three years after Adair's death.