Evan Jones – Supporting the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears
By Simonetta Carr - Posted at Place for Truth:
Published April 20, 2026
May 26, 1838, was the start of the so-called Trail of Tears, when about 15,000 men, women, and children of the Cherokee nation were forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River, relinquishing most of their goods, and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma marked as “Indian territory.” Of these, 4,000 died of hunger, cold, and exhaustion. A missionary, Evan Jones, accompanied them in the march, assisting them as well as he could.Born in Brecknockshire, Wales, on May 14, 1788, Jones became an apprentice draper at age 15. At the same time, he studied to become a teacher, learning, among other subjects, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. After moving to London to improve his education, he met Elizabeth (“Eliza”) Lanigan, “a woman of good judgment and education,” in the store where he worked. They married in 1808.
Missionary and Teacher
In 1821, the Joneses and their four children immigrated to Philadelphia, where Evan answered a call from the Baptist Foreign Mission Board to be a teacher for the Cherokee. He was stationed in Valley Town, in today’s North Carolina. Later, he was made superintendent of the mission. One of his pupils, Jesse Bushyhead, became his close friend and translator, and Evan encouraged his ordination a few years later.
Jones found that the Cherokee were interested in learning. As the executive secretary of the Board, Leonard Butterfield, reported in 1835, the Cherokee reasoned: “We want our children to learn English so that the white man cannot cheat us.”[1] Jones was surprised and encouraged by the alacrity and intelligence of the Cherokee children. “Few white children can keep pace with them in learning,”[2] he wrote.
He was however shocked at the opposition he received from other people of European descent, who resented the education Native Americans received, especially when aided by federal funds. “The great objection urged by most people in these parts is the enmity of the old wars in which some of their friends had been killed by them,”[3] Butterfield wrote.
Besides the basic academic subjects, the students at Valley Town learned practical trades, such as husbandry for boys and spinning and weaving for girls. The school for girls was run by Eliza Jones, who also managed the mission while Evan was gone on evangelistic trips. This included overseeing both schools and the Sunday School classes, hosting visitors, and attending to the sick. All this, while raising her children, who also attended the school and helped with the chores. By 1830, the Joneses had five children of their own (some had died in infancy) plus four Cherokee orphaned children they adopted in 1827.
If the Cherokee were eager to study, they were initially reluctant to embrace Christianity, which they saw as a myth. The lackadaisical and skeptical attitude of many white people, coupled with their poor moral example, didn’t help, Jones noted. Soon, however, there was a boom of conversions. Between 1830 and 1838, Cherokee converts grow from 90 to over 500.
