II.

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 (Haudenosaunee) tribes and with the Delaware (Lenni Lenape), both of whom controlled extensive lands in the region, pushed the Cherokee southeast to the mountains and valleys of the southern part of the Appalachian chain. They settled in modern western Virginia, western West Virginia, western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, southeastern Kentucky, northwestern South Carolina, northern Georgia, and northern Alabama. The Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto encountered them in the Appalachians in 1540. By 1715 smallpox had reduced the Cherokee population to about 11,000.

During the British and French struggle for control of colonial North America, the Cherokee provided warriors in support of the British, but revolted against them in 1760 in the Cherokee War under Cherokee war chief Oconostota. During the American Revolution (1775-1783) tribal members aided Great Britain with sporadic attacks on outlying settlements. In 1785 a number of bands 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 1819, several thousand of the tribe migrated west of the Mississippi.

In 1820 the Cherokee established a republican governmental system modeled on that of the United States, with an elected principal chief, a senate, and a house of representatives. 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 northwestern Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and southwestern 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 the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Their action was repudiated by more than nine-tenths of the tribe, and several members of the group were later assassinated. In 1838 federal troops began forcibly evicting the Cherokee. Approximately 1,000 Cherokee escaped to the North Carolina mountains, purchased land, and incorporated in that state; they were the ancestors of the present-day Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of North Carolina.

Meanwhile, most of the tribe were driven west about 1,285 km (about 800 mi) in a forced march, known as the Trail of Tears. About 4,000 perished through hunger, disease, exposure, and attacks by bandits during the journey or in stockades awaiting removal. Others died after their arrival in the Indian Territory from disease or food shortages. In the Indian Territory the Cherokee reorganized their government under their chief, John Ross, and became known as the Western Band, or the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. The Cherokee, along with other Southeast tribes relocated to the Indian Territory—the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole—became known to non-Indians as one of the Five Civilized Tribes because of their having adopted many Euro-American customs.

During the American Civil War (1861-1865), after great internal conflict, the tribe sided with the Confederacy; a postwar treaty with the United States freed the black slaves belonging to tribal members. Under the General Allotment Act of 1887—uncompromisingly resisted by the Cherokee—plots of tribal land were forcibly allotted to individual members. Surplus lands not assigned to Cherokee individuals 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 non-Indian settlers, in a famous land run. The Cherokee government was dissolved, and its people became U.S. citizens when Oklahoma achieved statehood in 1907.