Cherokee

The Cherokee ( CHAIR-ə-kee, CHAIR-ə-KEE; Cherokee: ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, romanized: Aniyvwiyaʔi / Anigiduwagi, or ᏣᎳᎩ, Tsalagi) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their ancestral homelands, living in towns along river valleys in what is now southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, parts of western South Carolina, northern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama, with hunting grounds extending into Kentucky. Together, these lands encompassed approximately 40,000 square miles. The Cherokee language belongs to the Iroquoian language family. In the 19th century, the ethnographer James Mooney recorded an oral tradition describing the Cherokee as having migrated southward in ancient times from the Great Lakes region, an area historically associated with other Iroquoian peoples. More recent linguistic and archaeological scholarship has proposed an earlier origin. Anthropologist Thomas R. Whyte, writing in 2007, suggested that the proto-Iroquoian language likely originated in the Appalachian region and that the divergence between Northern and Southern Iroquoian languages began approximately 4,000 years ago. By the 19th century, European American settlers classified the Cherokee as one of the "Five Civilized Tribes" of the Southeast. The Cherokee were primarily agrarian, lived in permanent towns, and adopted certain cultural and technological practices introduced by European Americans. During this period, they also developed their own writing system. Today, three Cherokee tribes are federally recognized: the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians (UKB) in Oklahoma, the Cherokee Nation (CN) in Oklahoma, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) in North Carolina. The Cherokee Nation has more than 300,000 enrolled citizens, making it the largest of the 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States. In addition, numerous groups claim Cherokee lineage, some of which are state-recognized. More than 819,000 people identified as having Cherokee ancestry on the U.S. census, although most are not enrolled citizens of any federally recognized tribe. Of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes, the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band maintain their headquarters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where the majority of their citizens reside. Members of the UKB are primarily descendants of the so-called “Old Settlers,” also known as Western Cherokee, who migrated from the Southeast to Arkansas and present-day Oklahoma beginning around 1817, prior to Indian removal. They are closely related to the Cherokee who were later forcibly relocated during the 1830s under the Indian Removal Act. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is based on the Qualla Boundary in western North Carolina and is largely descended from Cherokee ancestors who resisted or avoided removal and remained in the region. Although they relinquished tribal citizenship during this period and became state and U.S. citizens, they reorganized in the late 19th century and achieved federal recognition as a tribe.