Also known as "Unadena", meaning "woolly head" in Cherokee, the boy Jesse was reared in his parents' Cherokee culture. He started school in 1833 at Candy Creek Mission, Tennessee, under the charge of Rev. Holland. In 1835 he went to the Mission School at Valley River in North Carolina and remained there for one year, where he was taught by Evan Jones, a noted Baptist minister and close associate of his father. Bushyhead was a supporter of the Chief John Ross faction, when the tribe was divided by opinions about making a treaty to cede land and move west of the Mississippi River, as was being urged by the federal government.