The Cherokee Nation - largest of the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast - is a people of Iroquoian lineage.

The Cherokee, who called themselves 'Ani'-Yun' wiya' - 'Principal People' - the 'Keetoowah' - 'people of Kituhwa' - or Tsalagi from their own name for the Cherokee Nation - migrated to the Southeast from the Great Lakes Region.
They commanded more than 40,000 square miles in the southern Appalachians by 1650 with a population estimated at 22,500.

The Cherokee Native Americans were a large tribe who lived in the Smokey Mountain region including Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. Their language came from the Iroquois. The Cherokee were divided into seven clans. People in a clan had to marry outside of his or her clan. 
Then, the male lived with his wife's family. Before the Europeans came over, they lived together in square houses made of bark, wood, earth, and clay. Later, they lived in log cabins.

Their economy consisted of the cultivation of corn, beans, and squash. Also, hunting and slash-and-burn agriculture
was a large part of their economy. Their only domesticated animal was the dog, until the Europeans brought horses over.

The Cherokees held many ceremonies. One of their ceremonies marked the changing of rulers between the Red and White Orginizations. Another ceremony consisted of nightlong dancing before going to war. After war, they had rituals of purification before they returned to their daily routine.

For leisure, the Cherokees played a game with rackets and a ball. Ritual fasting and bleeding was associated with the game. Along with this they had ceremonies called harvest feast and an observance of the new year.

Cherokee life and culture greatly resembled that of the Creek and other Indians of the Southeast. The Cherokee nation was composed of a confederacy of red (war) and white (peace) towns. The chiefs of the red towns were subordinated to a supreme war chief, while the officials of the white towns were under the supreme peace chief. The white towns provided sanctuary for wrongdoers; war ceremonies were conducted in red towns.

When first encountered by Europeans in the mid-16th century, the Cherokee possessed a variety of stone implements including knives, axes, and chisels. They wove baskets, made pottery, and cultivated corn (maize), beans, and squash. 
Deer, bear, and elk furnished meat and clothing. 
Cherokee dwellings were windowless log cabins roofed with bark, with one door and a smokehole in the roof. 
A typical Cherokee town had between 30 and 60 such houses and a council house where general meetings were held and the sacred fire burned. 
An important religious ceremony was the Busk, or Green Corn, festival, a first-fruits and new-fires rite.

The Cherokee wars and treaties, a series of battles and agreements around the period of the U.S. War of Independence, effectively reduced Cherokee power and landholdings in Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and western North and South Carolina, freeing this territory for speculation and settlement by the white man. Numbering about 22,000 tribesmen in 200 villages throughout the area, the Cherokee had since the beginning of the 18th century
remained friendly to the British in both trading and military affairs.

In 1773 the Treaty of Augusta, concluded at the request of both Cherokee and Creek Indians, ceded more than 2,000,000 tribal acres in Georgia to relieve a seemingly hopeless Indian indebtedness to white traders. In 1775 the Overhill Cherokee were persuaded at the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals to sell an enormous tract of land in central Kentucky.

Although this agreement with the Transylvania Land Company violated British law, it nevertheless became the basis for the white takeover of that area. Threatened by colonial encroachment upon their hunting grounds, the Cherokee announced at the beginning of the American Revolution their determination to support the crown.

Despite British attempts to restrain them, in July 1776 a force of 700 Cherokee under Chief Dragging-canoe attacked two U.S.-held forts in North Carolina: Eaton's Station and Ft. Watauga. Both assaults failed, and the tribe retreated in disgrace. These raids set off a series of attacks by Cherokee, Creek, and Choctaw on frontier towns, eliciting a vigorous response by militia and regulars of the Southern states during September and October.

At the end of this time, Cherokee power was broken, crops and villages destroyed, and warriors dispersed. The humiliated Indians could win peace only by surrendering vast tracts of territory in North and South Carolina at the Treaty of DeWitt's Corner (May 20, 1777) and the Treaty of Long Island of Holston (July 20, 1777). As a result, peace reigned on this frontier for the next two years.

When Cherokee raids flared up again in 1780 during American preoccupation with British armed forces elsewhere, punitive action led by Col. Arthur Campbell and Col. John Sevier soon brought them to terms again. At the second Treaty of Long Island of Holston (July 26, 1781), previous land cessions were confirmed and additional territory yielded.

After 1800 the Cherokee were remarkable for their assimilation of white culture. The Cherokee formed a government modelled on that of the U.S. Under Chief Junaluska they aided Andrew Jackson against the Creek (see Creek War), particularly in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. They adopted white methods of farming, weaving, and home building.

Perhaps most remarkable of all was the syllabary of the Cherokee language, developed in 1821 by Sequoyah, a half-blooded Cherokee who had served with the U.S. Army in the Creek War. 
The syllabary--a system of writing in
which each symbol represents a syllable--was so successful that almost the entire tribe became literate within a short time.

A written constitution was adopted, and religious literature flourished, including translations from the Christian scriptures. An Indian newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, the first of its kind, began publication in February 1828.

But the Cherokee's rapid acquisition of white culture did not protect them against the land hunger of the settlers. When gold was discovered on Cherokee land in Georgia, agitation for the removal of the Indians increased. In December 1835 the Treaty of New Echota, signed by a small minority of the Cherokee, ceded to the U.S. all their land east of the Mississippi River for $5,000,000. The overwhelming majority of Cherokees repudiated the treaty and took their case to the Supreme Court of the United States. The court rendered a decision favourable to the Indians, declaring that Georgia had no jurisdiction over the Cherokees and no claim to their lands.

Georgia officials ignored the court's decision, and Pres. Andrew Jackson refused to enforce it. As a result, the Cherokees were evicted under the Indian Removal Act of 1830 by 7,000 troops commanded by Gen. Winfield Scott. Some 15,000 Cherokees were first gathered into camps while their homes were plundered and burned by local residents. Then the Indians were sent west in groups of about 1,000, most on foot.

The eviction and forced march, which came to be known as the Trail of Tears, took place during the fall and winter of 1838-39 
and was badly mismanaged. Inadequate food supplies led to terrible suffering, especially after frigid weather arrived. About 4,000 Cherokees died on the 116-day journey, many because the escorting troops refused to slow or stop so that the ill and exhausted could recover.

When the main body had finally reached its new home in what is now northeastern Oklahoma, new controversies began with the settlers already there. Feuds and murders rent the tribe as reprisals were made on those who had signed the Treaty of New Echota.

In Oklahoma the Cherokee joined four other tribes, the Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole, all forcibly removed from the Southeast by the U.S. government in the 1830s. For three-quarters of a century each tribe had a land allotment and a quasi-autonomous government modelled on that of the U.S. In preparation for Oklahoma statehood (1907), some of this land was allotted to individual Indians; the rest was opened up to white homesteaders, held in trust by the federal government, or allotted to freed slaves.

Tribal governments were effectively dissolved in 1906 but have continued to exist in a limited form. Some Indians now live on tribal landholdings that are informally called reservations. In the late 20th century there were approximately 47,000 Cherokee descendants living in eastern Oklahoma and about 15,000 full-bloods. At the time of removal in 1838, a few hundred Cherokee escaped to the mountains and furnished the nucleus for the 3,000
Cherokee who in the 20th century lived in western North Carolina.
 
 

"There is no such thing as 'part-Cherokee.' 
Either you're Cherokee or you're not. 
It isn't the quantity of Cherokee blood in your veins that is important,
but the quality of it . . .  your pride in it. 
I have seen full-bloods who have virtually no idea 
of the great  legacy entrusted to their care. 
Yet, I have seen people with as little as 1/500th blood 
quantum who inspire the spirits of their ancestors 
because they make being Cherokee a proud part of a their everyday life." 

~Jim Pell: 
Principal Chief of the North Alabama Cherokee Tribe ~
 
 
 
 
 
 

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