High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Yonaguska, who was also known as Drowning Bear (the English approximation of his name), was a figure of persistence and endurance in the story of the Cherokee. He was a reformer who banished alcoholic drinks from his land and his people after receiving a vision warning him to do so. Yonaguska challenged Rev. Schermerhorn to explain the terms of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota that a handful of Cherokee had signed. He is also the only chief who remained in the hills to rebuild the Eastern Band with others who had escaped or eluded the soldiers. His adopted son, William Thomas, the only white chief the Cherokee ever had, would carry on Yonaguska’s work to establish what is now the Qualla Boundary. During his life, however, Yonaguska was also a reformer and a prophet, a leader who recognized the power of the white man’s liquor and early on realized the lengths to which settlers would go to take over Cherokee lands.