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Cherokee

According to the 2010 census, the Cherokee are the largest of the 565 federally recognized American Indian tribal groups in the United States, with more than 800,000 individuals identifying themselves as Cherokee. They are also culturally diverse, with more than 65 percent of that population reporting multiple tribal and racial affiliations. Less than half of the population self-identified as Cherokee in the 2010 census are officially enrolled in one of the federally recognized tribes, reducing membership to 300,000. Nonetheless, this still makes them one of the largest groups.

The word Cherokee has several sources, including a Choctaw word meaning Cave People. After being adopted and used by Europeans, the Cherokee eventually embraced the name as well in the form of Tsa'lagi’ or Tsa'ragi’. Traditionally, the Cherokee people refer to themselves as ani’-yûñ'wiya’, which means the Real People or the Principal People. At the time of European contact in 1540, the Cherokee occupied and utilized a vast area, approximately 40,000 square miles of land, in what is now Alabama, the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Virginias, until relocated to present-day Oklahoma in 1835–39. Today, the Cherokee are comprised of three federally recognized tribes—the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, both located in Oklahoma, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee, located on a reservation in North Carolina. In addition, there are also Cherokee bands like the Echota Cherokee Tribe in Alabama.

Sequoyah and Cherokee Literacy

Sequoyah (George Grist) was a pivotal figure in Cherokee history whose translation of the Cherokee language into an 85-symbol syllabary (a set of written symbols representing spoken syllables in the Cherokee language) contributed to the rapid spread of literacy among the Cherokee in 1821. The use and dissemination of the syllabary occurred during an important period in Cherokee history. Sequoyah's syllabary made written correspondence between the geographically separated Cherokee groups possible. It contributed to the survival of their language and the independence of the Cherokee people as a whole. As a result of Sequoyah's syllabary, parts of the Bible were translated into Cherokee and from 1827 to 1828, both the Cherokee constitution and the Cherokee Phoenix, a weekly newspaper printed in Cherokee and English, were an important voice in the battle over removal.

The forced relocation of several tribes from the southwestern United States after the Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to the deaths of an estimated 4,000 Cherokee. Known as the Trail of Tears, two of the routes are marked as National Historic Trails.

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Land Cessions, Removal, and the Trail of Tears

Between 1721 and 1835 numerous land cession agreements made with the British and the United States diminished Cherokee ancestral homelands. After the 1828 election of President Andrew Jackson, a supporter of removal, and the discovery of gold in Cherokee territory, Georgia aggressively campaigned to secure Cherokee land. Backed by the 1830 Indian Removal Act, which relocated eastern tribes to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), Georgia nullified Cherokee legal rights and extended state jurisdiction over their land. The Cherokee fought removal by pursuing their legal rights as an independent, sovereign state in court.

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