Cherokee
The Cherokee 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 in Oklahoma, the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians 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.
Etymology
A Cherokee-language name for the Cherokee people is Aniyvwiya. Another Cherokee endonym is Anigiduwagi, a reference to Kituwah, the ancient mother town of the Cherokee people. Tsalagi Gawonihisdi is the Cherokee name for the Cherokee language.Numerous theories—none of which are definitive—have been proposed regarding the origin of the name Cherokee. Some scholars suggest it may have originated as a name applied by neighboring tribes in the region.
One of the earliest Spanish transliterations of the name, recorded in 1755, appears as Tchalaque, although the term itself dates to accounts associated with the Hernando de Soto expedition of the mid-16th century. Another theory suggests that Cherokee derives from the Lower Creek word Cvlakke, reflecting Creek usage for the Cherokee people who inhabited the southern Appalachian region.
The Iroquois Five Nations, historically based in New York and Pennsylvania, referred to the Cherokee as Oyata'ge'ronoñ. It has also been suggested that the word Cherokee originated from a Muscogee Creek term meaning, referencing the linguistic distinction between the two groups. However, Cherokee scholar Jack Kilpatrick disputed this interpretation, arguing instead that the name derives from the Cherokee word tsàdlagí, meaning.
Origins
Anthropologists and historians have two main theories of Cherokee origins. One is that the Cherokee, an Iroquoian-speaking people, migrated to Southern Appalachia from northern areas around the Great Lakes in The area became territory of the Iroquois nations and other Iroquoian-speaking peoples of the Southeast such as the Tuscarora people of the Carolinas, and the Meherrin and Nottaway of Virginia. The other theory is that the Cherokee had been in the Southeast for thousands of years and that proto-Iroquoian developed there instead of in the north.Supporting the first theory are recorded conversations of Cherokee elders made by ethnographer James Mooney in the late 19th century, who recounted an oral tradition of their people migrating south from the Great Lakes region in ancient times. They occupied territories where earthwork platform mounds were built by peoples during the earlier Woodland period.
The people of the Middle Woodland period are believed to be ancestors of the historic Cherokee and occupied what is now Western North Carolina, circa 200 to 600 CE. They are believed to have built what is called the Biltmore Mound, found in 1984 south of the Swannanoa River on the Biltmore Estate, which has numerous Native American sites.
Other ancestors of the Cherokee are considered to be part of the later Pisgah phase of South Appalachian Mississippian culture, a regional variation of the Mississippian culture that arose circa 1000 and lasted to 1500 CE. There is a consensus among most specialists in Southeast archeology and anthropology about these dates. But Finger says that ancestors of the Cherokee people lived in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee for a far longer period of time. Additional mounds were built by peoples during this cultural phase. Typically in this region, towns had a single platform mound and served as a political center for smaller villages.
Homelands
The Cherokee occupied numerous towns throughout the river valleys and mountain ridges of their homelands. What were called the Lower towns were found in what is present-day western Oconee County, South Carolina, along the Keowee River. The principal town of the Lower Towns was Keowee. Other Cherokee towns on the Keowee River included Estatoe and Sugartown, a name repeated in other areas.In western North Carolina, what were known as the Valley, Middle, and Outer Towns were located along the major rivers of the Tuckasegee, the upper Little Tennessee, Hiwasee, French Broad and other systems. The Overhill Cherokee occupied towns along the lower Little Tennessee River and upper Tennessee River on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains, in present-day southeastern Tennessee.
Agriculture
During the late Archaic and Woodland Period, Native Americans in the region began to cultivate plants such as marsh elder, lambsquarters, pigweed, sunflowers, and some native squash. People created new art forms such as shell gorgets, adopted new technologies, and developed an elaborate cycle of religious ceremonies.During the Mississippian culture-period, local women developed a new variety of maize called eastern flint corn. It closely resembled modern corn and produced larger crops. The successful cultivation of corn surpluses allowed the rise of larger, more complex chiefdoms consisting of several villages and concentrated populations during this period. Corn became celebrated among numerous peoples in religious ceremonies, especially the Green Corn Ceremony.
Early culture
Much of what is known about pre-18th century Native American cultures has come from records of Spanish expeditions. The earliest ones of the mid-16th century encountered peoples of the Mississippian culture era, who were ancestral to tribes that emerged in the Southeast, such as the Cherokee, Muscogee, Cheraw, and Catawba. Specifically in 1540–41, a Spanish expedition led by Hernando de Soto passed through present-day South Carolina, proceeding into western North Carolina and what is considered Cherokee country. The Spanish recorded a Chalaque people as living around the Keowee River, where western North Carolina, South Carolina, and northeastern Georgia meet. The Cherokee consider this area to be part of their homelands, which also extended into southeastern Tennessee.Further west, De Soto's expedition visited villages in present-day northwestern Georgia, recording them as ruled at the time by the Coosa chiefdom. This is believed to be a chiefdom ancestral to the Muscogee Creek people, who developed as a Muskogean-speaking people with a distinct culture.
In 1566, the Juan Pardo expedition traveled from the present-day South Carolina coast into its interior, and into western North Carolina and southeastern Tennessee. He recorded meeting Cherokee-speaking people who visited him while he stayed at the Joara chiefdom. The historic Catawba later lived in this area of the upper Catawba River. Pardo and his forces wintered over at Joara, building Fort San Juan there in 1567.
His expedition proceeded into the interior, noting villages near modern Asheville and other places that are part of the Cherokee homelands. According to anthropologist Charles M. Hudson, the Pardo expedition also recorded encounters with Muskogean-speaking peoples at Chiaha in southeastern modern Tennessee.
Linguistic studies
Linguistic studies have been another way for researchers to study the development of people and their cultures. Unlike most other Native American tribes in the American Southeast at the start of the historic era, the Cherokee and Tuscarora people spoke Iroquoian languages. Since the Great Lakes region was the territory of most Iroquoian-language speakers, scholars have theorized that both the Cherokee and Tuscarora migrated south from that region. The Cherokee oral history tradition supports their migration from the Great Lakes.Linguistic analysis shows a relatively large difference between Cherokee and the northern Iroquoian languages, suggesting they had migrated long ago. Scholars posit a split between the groups in the distant past, perhaps 3,500–3,800 years ago. Glottochronology studies suggest the split occurred between about 1500 and 1800 BCE. The Cherokee say that the ancient settlement of Kituwa on the Tuckasegee River is their original settlement in the Southeast. It was formerly adjacent to and is now part of Qualla Boundary in North Carolina.
According to Thomas Whyte, who posits that proto-Iroquoian developed in Appalachia, the Cherokee and Tuscarora broke off in the Southeast from the major group of Iroquoian speakers who migrated north to the Great Lakes area. There a succession of Iroquoian-speaking tribes were encountered by Europeans in historic times.