Traditionally, the title of Beloved Man or Beloved Woman was reserved for Cherokee people who had proven themselves valiant warriors in battle but had grown too old to fight anymore. They would come home to an honored place in their tribe, serving their community in new ways, off the battlefield. 

Jeremiah “Jerry” Wolfe, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ Beloved Man, passed away Monday at the age of 93. 

War hero and former Principal Chief Robert Youngdeer received the highest honor available in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians when Tribal Council voted unanimously during its Jan. 4 meeting to name him a Beloved Man.

The Cherokee of Jerry Wolfe’s early memory is a different place than the Qualla Boundary of today.

Wolfe, 93, remembers hills covered in farmland rather than forest, cleared by hand to keep the trees from encroaching on slopes families coaxed to yield the corn, beans and potatoes that fueled them. The weedy edges of fields yielded blueberries, blackberries and strawberries. The woods yielded fuel for winter heat in the log cabins and, when the family ran out of kerosene, knots of pine sap that could ignite to keep the lights on.