What are the Cherokee
North American tribe, of the Iroquoian linguistic family and the Southeast culture area. The Cherokee played an important role in colonial America and in United States history; they remain one of the largest tribes in the United States.
Cherokee History
Archaeological and linguistic
evidence indicates that the Cherokee migrated in prehistoric
times from present-day Texas or northern Mexico to the Great Lakes area. Wars with
the Iroquois tribes of the New York area and the Delaware tribes pushed them southeast to
the Allegheny and Appalachian mountain regions in modern North and South Carolina,
Tennessee, and northern Georgia and Alabama.
There the Spanish explorer Hernando
de Soto encountered them in 1540. In 1715 smallpox reduced their population to about
11,000. During the British and French struggle for
control of colonial North America, the Cherokee generally sided with the British,
and during the American Revolution the tribe aided Great Britain. In
1785 they negotiated a peace treaty
with the United States, but Cherokee resistance
continued for a decade thereafter. In 1791 a new treaty reconfirmed the earlier one;
part of Cherokee territory was ceded to the United States, and the permanent rights
of the tribe to the remaining territory were established. Between 1790 and 1817,
about 3000 of the tribe migrated west of the Mississippi, becoming known as the
Western Band.
In 1820 the tribe established a
governmental system modeled on that of the United States,
with an elected principal chief, a senate, and a house of representatives. Because of
this
system, the Cherokee were included as one of the so-called Five Civilized tribes.
In 1827 they drafted a constitution
and incorporated as the Cherokee Nation.
Meanwhile, valuable gold deposits were discovered in tribal lands, which by previous
cessions had been reduced to about 2,830,000 hectares (about 7 million acres) in
northwest Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and southwest North Carolina.
In 1819 Georgia appealed to the
U.S. government to remove the Cherokee from Georgia
lands. When the appeal failed, attempts were made to purchase the territory.
In retaliation the Cherokee Nation enacted a law forbidding any such sale on
punishment of death.
In 1828 the Georgia legislature
outlawed the Cherokee government and confiscated
tribal lands. Cherokee appeals for federal protection were rejected by President
Andrew Jackson. In 1832 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the
Georgia legislation was unconstitutional; federal authorities, following Jackson's
policy of Native American removal, ignored the decision.
About 500 leading Cherokee agreed in 1835 to cede the tribal territory in exchange for
$5,700,000 and land in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Their action was repudiated
by more than nine-tenths of the tribe, and several of the groups were later
assassinated.
In 1838 federal troops began forcibly evicting the Cherokee. Several hundred escaped
to the North Carolina mountains, purchased land, and incorporated in that state;
they were the ancestors of the present-day Eastern Band.
Meanwhile, most of the tribe, including the Western Band, were driven west in a more
than 480-km (about 300-mi) forced march, known as the Trail of Tears.
The march west included 18,000 to 20,000 people, of whom about 4000 perished through
hunger, disease, and exposure. In Indian Territory the Cherokee reorganized their
government under their chief, John Ross.
During the American Civil War,
after great internal conflict, the tribe sided with the Confederacy; a postwar treaty with
the United States freed the black slaves of tribal
members. Under the General Allotment Act of 1887—uncompromisingly resisted by
the Cherokee—plots of tribal land were forcibly allotted to individual members.
The government of the Cherokee
Nation was dissolved, and its people became
U.S. citizens when Oklahoma achieved statehood in 1907. Surplus lands were
parceled out by the federal government, and in 1891 the tribe's western land
extension, the Cherokee Strip or Cherokee Outlet, was sold to the United States;
in 1893 it was opened, mostly to white settlers, in a famous land run.