Cherokee, probably from the Creek tciloki, "People Who Speak Differently." Their self-designation was Ani-yun-wiya, "Real People." With the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole, the Cherokee were one of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes; this non-native appellation arose because by the early nineteenth century these Indians dressed, farmed, and governed themselves so nearly like white Americans. At the time of contact the Cherokee were the largest tribe in the southeast. Cherokees were formerly known as Kituhwas.
Location Between about 70 and 100 precontact villages were located in roughly 40,000 square miles of the southern Appalachian region, including parts of the present-day states of North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. There were towns in the lower region (headwaters of the Savannah River), the middle region (headwaters of the Little Tennessee River), and the upper region (lower Little Tennessee River and the headwaters of the Hiwassee River). Today, most Cherokees live in northeastern Oklahoma. A sizable minority lives in western North Carolina.
Population There were roughly 29,000 Cherokees in the mid-sixteenth century and perhaps 22,000 in 1650. In 1990, 308,132 people identified themselves as Cherokees, although fewer than half belong to federally recognized groups.
Language Cherokee is an Iroquoian language. The lower towns spoke the Elati dialect; the middle towns spoke the Kituhwa dialect; the upper (overhill and valley) towns spoke the Atali dialect. The dialects were mutually intelligible with difficulty.
Historical Information
History The Cherokee probably originated in the upper Ohio Valley, the Great Lakes region, or someplace else in the north. They may also have been related to the Mound Builders. The town of Echota, on the Little Tennessee River, may have been the ancient capital of the Cherokee Nation.
They encountered Hernando de Soto about 1540, probably not long after they arrived in their historic homeland. Spanish attacks against the Indians commenced shortly thereafter, although new diseases probably weakened the people even before Spanish soldiers began killing them. There were also contacts with the French and especially the British in the early seventeenth century. Traders brought guns around 1700, along with debilitating alcohol.
The Cherokee fought a series of wars with Tuscarora, Shawnee, Catawba, Creek, and Chickasaw Indians early in the eighteenth century. In 1760 the Cherokee, led by Chief Oconostota, fought the British as a protest against unfair trade practices and violence practiced against them as a group. Cherokees raided settlements and captured a British fort but were defeated after two years of fighting by the British scorched-earth policy. The peace treaty cost the Indians much of their eastern land, and, in fact, they never fully recovered their prominence after that time
Significant depopulation resulted from several mid-eighteenth century epidemics. Cherokee support for Britain during the American Revolution encouraged attacks by North Carolina militia. Finally, some Cherokees who lived near Chattanooga relocated in 1794 to Arkansas and Texas and in 1831 to Indian Territory (Oklahoma). These people eventually became known as the Western Cherokee.
After the American Revolution, Cherokees adopted British-style farming, cattle ranching, business, and government, becoming relatively cohesive and prosperous. They also owned slaves. They sided with the United States in the 1813 Creek war, during which a Cherokee saved Andrew Jackson’s life. The tribe enjoyed a cultural renaissance between about 1800 and 1830, although they were under constant pressure for land cession and riven by internal political factionalism.
The Cherokee Nation was founded in 1827 with "western" democratic institutions and a written constitution (which specifically disenfranchised African Americans and women). By then, Cherokees were intermarrying regularly with non-natives and were receiving increased missionary activity, especially in education. Sequoyah (also known as George Gist) is credited with devising a Cherokee syllabary in 1821 and thus providing his people with a written language. During the late 1820s, the people began publishing a newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix.
The discovery of gold in their territory led in part to the 1830 Indian Removal Act, requiring the Cherokee (among other tribes) to relocate west of the Mississippi River. Despite significant public pressure to let them remain, and despite a victory in the U.S. Supreme Court, President Andrew Jackson forced the Indians out. When a small minority of Cherokees signed the Treaty of New Echota, ceding the tribe’s last remaining eastern lands, local non-natives immediately began appropriating the Indians’ land and plundering their homes and possessions. Indians were forced into internment camps, where many died, although over 1,000 escaped to the mountains of North Carolina, where they became the progenitors of what came to be called the Eastern Band of Cherokees.
Sequoyah is credited with devising a Cherokee syllabary in 1821 and thus providing his people with a written language.
The removal, known as the Trail of Tears, began in 1838. The Indians were forced to walk 1,000 miles through severe weather without adequate food and clothing. About 4,000 Cherokees, almost a quarter of the total, died during the removal, and more died once the people reached the Indian Territory, where they joined—and largely absorbed—the group already there. Following their arrival in Indian Territory, the Cherokees quickly adopted another constitution and reestablished their institutions and facilities, including newspapers and schools. Under Chief John Ross, most Cherokees supported slavery and also supported the Confederate cause in the Civil War.
The huge "permanent" Indian territory was often reduced in size. When the northern region was removed to create the states of Kansas and Nebraska, Indians living there were again forcibly resettled. One result of the Dawes Act (late 1880s) was the "sale" (virtual appropriation) of roughly two million acres of Indian land in Oklahoma. Oklahoma became a territory in 1890 and a state in 1907. Although the Cherokees and other tribes resisted allotment, Congress forced them to acquiesce in 1898. Their land was individually allotted in 1902, at about the same time their native governments were officially "terminated."
Ten years after the Cherokee removal, the U.S. Congress ceased efforts to round up the Eastern Cherokee. The Indians received state (North Carolina) citizenship in 1866 and incorporated as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in 1889. In the early twentieth century, many Eastern Cherokees were engaged in subsistence farming and in the local timber industry. Having resisted allotment, the tribe took steps to ensure that it would always own its land. Although the Cherokee suffered greatly during the Depression, the Great Smoky Mountain National Park (1930s) served as the center of a growing tourist industry.
In the 1930s, the United Keetoowah Band (UKB), a group of full-bloods opposed to assimilation, formally separated from the Oklahoma Cherokees. The group originated in the antiallotment battles at the end of the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century the UKB reconstructed several traditional political structures, such as the seven clans and white towns, as well as some ancient cultural practices that did not survive the move west. The name Keetoowah derives from an ancient town in western North Carolina. They received federal recognition in 1946.
Most Cherokees supported slavery as well as the Confederate cause in the Civil War. This is a Cherokee translation of President Abraham Lincoln’s pardon and offer of amnesty to the Indians who fought with the Confederate army during the Civil War.
Religion The tribe’s chief deity was the sun, which may have had a feminine identity. The people conceived of the cosmos as being divided into an upper world, this world, and a lower world. Each contained numerous spiritual beings that resided in specific places. The four cardinal directions were replete with social significance. Tribal mythology, symbols, and beliefs were complex, and there were also various associated taboos, customs, and social and personal rules.
Many ceremonies revolved around subsistence activities as well as healing. The primary one was the annual Green Corn ceremony (Busk), observed when the last corn crop ripened. Shamans were religious leaders and curers. The people thought of disease as being caused by dreams or animals, real or mythical. Cures consisted of herbal treatments, sweats, changes in diet, deep scratching, rubbing, and spiritual remedies.
Medicine people (men and women) were curers, conjurers, diviners, wizards, and witches. They could, by magical means, influence events and the lives and fortunes of people. Witches, when discovered, were summarily killed. Learning sorcery took a lifetime. Medicine powers could be used for good or evil, and the associated beads, crystals, and formulas were a regular part of many people’s lives.
Ayyuini (Swimmer), a Cherokee medicine man (1902). Medicine people were curers, conjurers, diviners, wizards, and witches. They could, by magical means, influence events and the lives and fortunes of people.
Government The various Cherokee villages formed a loose confederacy. There were two chiefs per village: a red, or war, chief, and a white chief (Most Beloved Man or Woman), who was associated with civil, economic, religious, and juridical functions. The red chief was also in charge of lacrosse games. Chiefs could be male or female, and there was little or no hereditary component. There was also a village council, in which women sat, although usually only as observers. Its powers were fairly limited. The Cherokee were not a cohesive political entity until the late eighteenth century at the earliest.
Customs Men played intraclan lacrosse and chunkey. They also held athletic races and competitions. Lacrosse had serious ceremonial aspects and accompanying rituals, including dances and certain taboos. There were seven matrilineal clans in the early historic period. Cherokees regularly engaged in ceremonial purification, and they paid careful attention to their dreams.
Both men and women, married and single, enjoyed a high degree of sexual freedom. Divorce was possible; men who were thrown out returned to their mothers. Pregnant women were expected to pray and bathe every new moon for several months prior to delivery. Babies were bathed every morning, and young children bathed every morning for at least the first two years. Twins were accorded special treatment and were often raised to be wizards. Children were treated gently, and they behaved with decorum. In general, Cherokees, valuing harmony as well as generosity, tried to avoid conflict.
Intraclan, but not interclan, murder was a capital offense. Names were changed or added to frequently. As with chiefs, towns may also have been considered red and white. Women owned the houses and their contents; this custom, along with matrilineal descent and the clan system, weakened with increasing exposure to non-native society. Kinsmen avenged the death of their kinsmen, according to the law of retaliation.
People did not address each other directly. In place of public sanctions, Cherokees used ostracism and public scorn to enforce social norms. Burial with possessions took place in the earth or under piles of stone.
Dwellings Towns were located along rivers and streams. They contained a central ceremonial place and in the early historic period were often surrounded by palisades. People built rectangular summer houses of pole frames and wattle, walls of cane matting and clay plaster, and gabled bark or thatch roofs. The houses, about 60 or 70 feet by 15 feet, were often divided into three parts: a kitchen, a dining area, and bedrooms. Some were two stories high, with the upper walls open for ventilation. There was probably one door. Beds were made of rush mats over wood splints, and animal skins served as bedding.
Smaller, circular winter houses (which also served as sweat houses) were simply 20-foot-high pole-and-earth cones placed over pits. Cherokees also built domed town/council/ceremonial houses and seven-sided temples, the latter located on raised mounds in the village plaza, of earth over a post-and-beam frame. Some were large enough to hold 500 people. Tiered interior seats surrounded a center fire.
For the Cherokee, lacrosse had serious ceremonial aspects and accompanying rituals, including dances and certain taboos. Pictured in this 1889 photograph is the Cherokee Ballplayers’ Dance on Qualla Reservation in North Carolina. In the ceremony before the game, the women’s dance leader (left) beats a drum and the men’s dance leader (right) shakes a gourd rattle. The ballplayers, carrying ball sticks, circle counterclockwise around the fire.
Diet Cherokees were primarily farmers. Women grew corn (three kinds), beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco, the latter used ceremonially. Corn was roasted, boiled, and ground into flour and then baked into bread.
Wild foods included roots, crab apples, persimmons, plums, cherries, grapes, hickory nuts, walnuts, chestnuts, and berries. Men hunted various animals, including deer, bear, raccoon, rabbit, squirrel, turkey, and rattlesnake. They stalked deer using entire deerskins and deer calls. Hunting was preceded by the proper prayers and songs. Meat was broiled or boiled.
They fished occasionally, and they collected maple syrup in earthen pots and boiled it into syrup.
Key Technology Fish were caught using spears, weirs, poison, and the hook-and-line. Hunting gear included the bow and arrow, stone hatchet, and flint knife. Smaller animals and birds were shot with darts blown out of hollow 9- to 10-foot-long cane stems; these blowguns were accurate up to 60 feet.
Other material items included cane and root baskets; stone pipes on wooden stems; pottery of various sizes and shapes, often "stamped" with carved wooden designs; wooden medicine boxes; reed arrows with bone or fish-scale points attached with deer sinew; and drums, flutes, and gourd rattles. Ovens were a hot, flat stone covered with an inverted dish.
Trade Cherokee pipes were widely admired and easily exported. The people also traded maple sugar and syrup. They imported shell wampum that was used as money.
Notable Arts Plaited cane baskets, pottery, and masks carved of wood and gourds were especially fine. Pipes and moccasins may have been decorated with porcupine quills.
Transportation Men built 30- to 40-foot-long canoes of fire-hollowed pine or poplar logs. Each canoe could hold between 15 and 20 people. The people may also have used bark canoes.
Dress Women made most clothing of buckskin and other skins and furs as well as of mulberry bark fibers. Men wore breechclouts; women wore skirts. In winter, both wore bear or buffalo robes. Men also wore shirts and leggings, and women wore capes. Both sexes wore moccasins as well as nose ornaments, bracelets, and body paint. Men wore their hair in a roach; women wore it long. There were also ceremonial turkey and eagle feather headdresses and capes. Men slit their ears and stretched them with the use of copper wires.
War and Weapons Each village had a red (war) chief as well as a War Woman, who accompanied war parties. She fed the men, gave advice, and determined the fate of prisoners. Women also distinguished themselves in combat and often tortured prisoners of war. Cherokee enemies over time included the Catawba, Shawnee, Congaree, Tuscarora, Creek, and Iroquois. They were often allied with the Chickasaw. Weapons included the bow and arrow, knife, tomahawk, and darts, or short lances. The people often painted themselves, as well as their canoes and paddles, for war. The party carried an ark or medicine chest to war, and it left a war club engraved with its exploits in enemy territory.
Contemporary Information
Government/Reservations Cherokee Tribal Headquarters is located in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. As of the early 1990s there were more than 122,000 enrolled members of the Cherokee Nation. The 61,000-plus acres of tribal land is not a reservation but an administrative entity. Governmental leaders have been popularly elected since the 1970s. The tribe adopted a new constitution in 1975 that mandates a tripartite form of government.
The Qualla Boundary Cherokee Reservation, established in 1874, is located in western North Carolina. The enrolled population in 1990 was almost 10,000, nearly two-thirds of whom lived on tribal lands. The group owns more than 56,000 acres of land in North Carolina, mostly in Jackson and Swain Counties, and more than 76 acres in eastern Tennessee. Individuals hold title to most of this land, but they may transfer it only to other tribal members. Tribal government is composed of executive (three offices, two of which are elected), legislative (popularly elected tribal council), and judicial branches. As part of its responsibilities as a trustee for tribal lands, the U.S. government manages schools, lands, and public health.
The United Keetoowah Band is located in northeastern Oklahoma. It is governed by a tribal council. There were 7,450 members in the early 1990s. As they are legally unable to obtain a land base within the Cherokee Nation, they are currently seeking one elsewhere.
Economy Important economic activities include oil and gas sales and leases, arts and crafts, bingo, a utility company, and ranching, poultry, and woodcutting operations. In the early 1990s, the tribe was generating about half of its annual operating budget of over $65 million. It also anticipated payments from the settlement of disputed control of resources under the Arkansas riverbed, but this situation is still being argued, and no settlement has been achieved.
In North Carolina there are a craft factory, a lumber business, tourist enterprises, and numerous other businesses. People work seasonally in non-native tourist enterprises.
Legal Status The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and the United Keetoowah Band are federally recognized tribal entities. More than 50 other groups in 12 states also claim Cherokee identity.
Daily Life Oklahoma and North Carolina Cherokees stage an annual presentation for tourists. Since the 1970s, two people, Ross Swimmer and Wilma Mankiller, have dominated Cherokee tribal politics. In Oklahoma, there is some division between rural "conservatives" and "progressives," who tend to be wealthier and more urban. Most people are Christians. Many live in fairly isolated hill communities. Of the three Cherokee dialects, the Atali (Overhill) is still spoken in Oklahoma by about 13,000 people and another (the Middle, or Kituhwa) in North Carolina by about 1,000 people, primarily in religious services. In the 1990s, the Cherokee Nation adopted its own tax code as well as various self-governance mechanisms. Its major celebrations are held over Labor Day weekend. The Keetoowah Society (or the Nighthawk Keetoowas) closely adheres to traditional religious practice.
Eastern Cherokees have created a vibrant, economically stable community secure in its Indian identity. Most of their high school students attend college. There are various celebrations in the fall that feature traditional games and dancing. Facilities include a reproduced ancient village and a museum. The people still speak the language and still practice traditional medicine. The Eastern Band and the Cherokee Nation meet in joint council every two years. The UKB continues to resist reintegration into the Cherokee Nation. They conduct their own cultural activities.
