Stone Gardens: Chief Goingsnake ("I-na-du-na-i ") was buried on land he claimed in 1839 after arriving on the Trail of Tears

High on a wooded hillside north of Westville in Adair County, a solitary grave rests on private land overlooking Ward Branch Creek. A chain-link fence, erected in 1980 by the Goingsnake District Heritage Association, encircles the plot. Atop one post, rebar snakes--welded in rusting silhouette--stand guard like silent sentinels.

A modest stone marker bears the inscription: “Chief Goingsnake, Famous Cherokee Orator, Born 1758.” Nearby, a Trail of Tears Endurement plaque from the Oklahoma Chapter honors “one who endured the forced removal of the Cherokees in 1838-39.” This is the final resting place of I-na-du-na---“a snake goes along with him”--the man whose name would grace an entire district of the Cherokee Nation.

In the quiet of this Stone Garden, his story endures.

Born around 1758 in the Cherokee Nation East, near the misty junction where present-day Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia meet (close to what is now Nottely Lake)Goingsnake entered a world still largely untouched by forced removal.

Chief Goingsnake

Details of his immediate lineage remain sparse in the historic record, as was common for many full-blood Cherokee leaders of his generation whose lives were chronicled more through deeds than genealogy.

He emerged from traditional Cherokee society, where kinship ties ran deep through clans and towns, but no named parents, spouse, or children appear in surviving accounts. What is clear is that he rose as a respected figure in a time of profound upheaval, embodying the oral traditions and warrior ethos of his people.

Education for Goingsnake came not from mission schools or formal classrooms but from the living university of Cherokee life: the stories around council fires, the rhythms of hunting and farming, and the rigorous training of a warrior. He absorbed the art of oratory--the power of the spoken word that could sway councils and inspire nations--an skill that would define him.

His public career began in the early 1800s as town chief of “Goingsnake’s Town.” By 1808, when the Cherokee Nation in the East divided into eight districts, he represented the Amohee District in southeastern Tennessee on the National Council, earning a modest $1 per day for his service under Principal Chief Pathkiller.

In 1814, at roughly age 56, he answered the call to arms, joining some 700 Cherokee warriors who fought alongside General Andrew Jackson against the Creek (Muscogee) Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Serving in Captain John Brown’s company, he was wounded on March 27 and carried the scars of that alliance, later complicated by Jackson’s betrayal of Cherokee lands.

By 1827, Goingsnake had become Speaker of the National Council under the newly elected Principal Chief John Ross. Described as one of Ross’s “right-hand men,” the gifted orator used his eloquence to navigate the treacherous politics of removal. He signed key documents, including the 1839 Act of Union that formally merged the Eastern and Western Cherokees at Tahlequah.

Eyewitness William Shorey Coodey captured the dignity of the aging leader in an 1838 letter: “I glanced along the line and the form of Going Snake, an aged and respected chief whose head eighty summers had whitened, mounted his favorite pony, passed before me and led the way…”

Already in his eighties, Goingsnake endured the Trail of Tears as part of one of the early self-led detachments, departing in late August or September 1838 from northern Alabama or Georgia. The four-month journey brought him to Indian Territory in early 1839. He built a modest cabin on Ward Branch Creek, roughly six miles north of present-day Westville and two miles south of Ballard, in what would soon be named Goingsnake District.

There, in the new western homeland, he participated in the July 12, 1839, convention that sealed the Act of Union--his final recorded act of public service. At 81, he stepped down, and a new speaker took his place.

Goingsnake died shortly afterward. Most records place his death on March 1, 1840 (though one memorial notes February 21, 1841); he was 81 or 82. He was laid to rest directly in front of the cabin he had built, on the very land he had claimed after the long march west.

The grave remained unmarked for generations until the 1980 effort to honor him with the stone and fence that stand today. In 1840, the newly organized Cherokee Nation paid him the highest posthumous tribute by naming one of its eight political districts, (compassing much of present-day Adair County and parts of Delaware County) Goingsnake District.

A street in Tahlequah still bears his name.

In life, Goingsnake was warrior, councilor, orator, and survivor. In death, he became a place-name and a symbol of resilience. His single grave, far from the Georgia hills of his birth, anchors the landscape he helped shape in exile.

Visitors to this quiet Stone Garden in Adair County stand where a snake once crawled along with the Cherokee people--through war, removal, and rebirth--his voice still echoing in the wind through the trees.