Edward Wilkerson "Ned" Bushyhead (1832-1907)
The Bushyhead family plot in the city cemetery in the capital of the Cherokee Nation, Tahlequah, Okla., is in a high and honored spot. There lies the body of the first publisher of The Union, who died in Alpine, Calif., March 4, 1907.
Beside the grave of the newspaperman is the body of his brother, Dennis Wolfe Bushyhead, 1826-1897, principal chief of the Cherokees from 1879 to 1887.
E. W. Bushyhead, called Ned, one is told, was slightly less than half Cherokee, of a family whose non-Cherokee blood began with Ludovic Grant, a Scotsman who came to America in 1720.
He was born March 2, 1832, at Cleveland, Tenn. He was 7 when, in one of the worst abuses of presidential power in the history of the United States, the Cherokees were forcibly removed to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. His father led 1,000 Cherokees over the Trail of Tears, a re-enactment of which is now performed annually in a specially built theater at Tsa-La-Gi.
He was one of two Cherokees who trekked west that year who made names for themselves in California journalism and letters. The other was the mercurial John Rollin Ridge, who wrote for and edited several periodicals in Northern California, died in 1867 and is buried in Grass Valley.
Ned Bushyhead tried mining at Placerville for a year, then tried Tuolomne County for two years, then went to Calaveras County. There he met an Illinois lawyer, William Jeff Gatewood. Together they published a newspaper. Because Gatewood had married into the Crosthwaite family of San Diego and came under their influence, the paper was moved to San Diego.
Bushyhead did not like the prospects of San Diego nor the new venture and purposefully did not use his name in connection with the publication of the first issues of The Union. The publisher was listed as J.N. Briseno, an employee.
But the Cherokee outlasted them all. Gatewood sold out after eight months. Bushyhead stayed with The Union through four partners and the transition from a profitable and enterprising weekly to a daily which demanded much from him and Douglas Gunn, his last partner.
In 1873, he sold his interest for $5,000.
He took a trip to the East, including Washington, and in 1876 married a New York widow, Helen Cory Nichols. They adopted a daughter, who died. Mrs. Bushyhead, a spiritualist, always kept a place set for her at the table in their home at Third Avenue and Cedar Street.
Bushyhead served San Diego and San Diego County as chief of police and sheriff.
When he ran for sheriff, The Union editorialized, "Mr. Bushyhead is an old liner in Democracy, a Southerner by birth, a sympathizer with secession. But the base use to which Democracy in this country has been put has driven him from his old party. He is now a Republican, or, more properly, a liberal Democrat."
The Redlands Citrograph newspaper once wrote of him:
"Ned Bushyhead is one of nature's noblemen. He is as square as a die. As true as Toledo Steel. As brave as Paladin. As generous as a child. He never knew the meaning of fear."The Cherokee newspaperman died two days after his 75th birthday and eight months before Oklahoma, the state in which he was buried, achieved statehood.[excerpted from a San Diego Union article by Joe Stone]
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