Digital Repository

Chief Bowl

Cherokee leader Chief Bowl, also known as "Bowles" and "Duwali," was born in North Carolina around 1756 to a Scottish father and a Cherokee mother. In the early nineteenth century, Bowl led the first large Cherokee emigration west of the Mississippi River—to Missouri, then Arkansas, and finally to the Mexican province of Texas. There, in a settlement near Nacogdoches, Bowl headed an alliance of Cherokee villages.

Image: Portrait of Chief Bowl. Prints and Photographs Collection, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. #1/102-661.

Audio: Houston Public Media

Portrait of Chief Bowl