80 years ago today, Wilma Mankiller, a Native American activist, social worker, community developer and the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, was born.

Is included in linked site:

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.