The first woman elected as Chief of the Cherokee Nation was Wilma Pearl Mankiller. She was born November 18, 1945 in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Her father was a full-blood Cherokee and …
John Erling: The name Mankiller, what is the background to the name?
Wilma Mankiller: It really was a title. In Cherokee historical times there was a central government but a lot of the communities had a very strong local decentralized government structure as well. And one of the titles for one of the leaders in a, one of these villages was called a Mankiller and that’s what it translates into English is Mankiller, so when the census – I assume this is how this happened, when the census of the Unites States Government started taking census rolls of Cherokees, the guy with the title put down Mankiller as his name, and that’s who we trace our ancestry back to. At that time Cherokees only used one name, they didn’t have a first name and a last name.
Is included in linked site:
Sadly it doesn’t explain what that title meant.