The Cherokee are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, edges of western South Carolina, northern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama.
Cherokee County is a county located in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2010 census, the population was 46,987. Its county seat is Tahlequah, which is also the capital of the Cherokee Nation.
Park Hill is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in southwestern Cherokee County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 3,909 at the 2010 census. It lies near Tahlequah, east of the junction of U.S. Route 62 and State Highway 82.
Tahlequah is a city in Cherokee County, Oklahoma located at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. It is part of the Green Country region of Oklahoma and was established as a capital of the 19th-century Cherokee Nation in 1839, as part of the new settlement in Indian Territory after the Cherokee Native Americans were forced west from the American Southeast on the Trail of Tears.
The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma is a federally recognized tribe of Cherokee Native Americans headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. According to the UKB website, its members are mostly descendants of "Old Settlers" or "Western Cherokee," those Cherokee who migrated from the Southeast to present-day Arkansas and Oklahoma around 1817. Some reports estimate that Old Settlers began migrating west by 1800. This was before the forced relocation of Cherokee by the United States in the late 1830s under the Indian Removal Act.
The Cherokee Nation, also known as the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It was established in the 20th century and includes people descended from members of the Old Cherokee Nation who relocated, due to increasing pressure, from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokee who were forced to relocate on the Trail of Tears. The tribe also includes descendants of Cherokee Freedmen, Absentee Shawnee, and Natchez Nation. As of 2021, over 400,000 people were enrolled in the Cherokee Nation.
The Goingsnake Massacre refers to the eleven victims of a fatal shootout on April 15, 1872, that broke out during a murder and assault trial in the Cherokee court in the Goingsnake District of the Cherokee Nation The dead included three Cherokee on the defendant's side, including his attorney and a brother; a US Deputy Marshal and four members of his federal posse, plus three relatives of the Cherokee murder victim. Another ten men were wounded, including both Cherokee and white men.
Sequoyah High School is a Native American boarding school serving students in grades 7 through 12, who are members of a federally recognized Native American tribe. The school is located in Park Hill, Oklahoma, with a Tahlequah post office address, and is a Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) grant school operated by the Cherokee Nation.
Ned Christie, also known as NeDe WaDe (ᏁᏕᏩᏕ), was a Cherokee statesman. Christie was a member of the executive council in the Cherokee Nation senate, and served as one of three advisers to Principal Chief Dennis Bushyhead. A member of the Keetoowah Society, Christie supported Cherokee sovereignty and tried to resist white encroachment.
Talmadge Davis (1962–2005) was a Cherokee artist, who explored historical and military themes in his highly naturalistic paintings.
John Leak Springston "Oo ne qua ti" ᎤᏁᏆᏘ (1844–1929), a Cherokee, is best known as an Indian activist; during his life he was a Cherokee Interpreter, Editor, Lawyer, and Keetoowah Revivalist. Springston was born in the fall of 1844 in Indian Territory near Lynch's Mill, five miles east of the present site of Spavinaw Dam in the state of Oklahoma. He was the son of Anderson Springston and Sallie Eliot, Cherokees who walked the Trail of Tears from Gunter's Landing, Alabama on the Tennessee River, some 600 miles to Indian Territory. After removal, Anderson practiced law in the Cherokee courts of the Delaware and Tahlequah Districts, and as a young boy, John received instruction in tribal law and Cherokee culture at his father’s side.
The Cherokee National Capitol, now the Cherokee Nation Courthouse, is a historic tribal government building in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Completed in 1869, it served as the capitol building of the Cherokee Nation from 1869 to 1907, when Oklahoma became a state. It now serves as the site of the tribal supreme court and judicial branch. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961 for its role in the Nation's history.
The Cherokee Female Seminary,, was built by the Cherokee Nation in 1889 near Tahlequah, Indian Territory. It replaced their original girls' seminary that had burned down on Easter Sunday two years before. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
The Cherokee people of the southeastern United States, and later Oklahoma and surrounding areas, have a long military history. Since European contact, Cherokee military activity has been documented in European records. Cherokee tribes and bands had a number of conflicts during the 18th century with Europeans, primarily British colonists from the Southern Colonies. The Eastern Band and Cherokees from the Indian Territory fought in the American Civil War, with bands allying with the Union or the Confederacy. Because many Cherokees allied with the Confederacy, the United States government required a new treaty with the nation after the war. Cherokees have also served in the United States military during the 20th and 21st centuries.
The Cherokee Nation was a legal, autonomous, tribal government in North America recognized from 1794 to 1907. It was often referred to simply as "The Nation" by its inhabitants. The government was effectively disbanded in 1907, after its land rights had been extinguished, prior to the admission of Oklahoma as a state. During the late 20th century, the Cherokee people reorganized, instituting a government with sovereign jurisdiction known as the Cherokee Nation. On July 9, 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had never been disestablished in the years before allotment and Oklahoma Statehood.
Bill John Baker is the previous Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. First elected in October 2011, Baker defeated three-term incumbent Chief Chad "Corntassel" Smith. Prior to his election as Chief, Baker served 12 years on the Cherokee Tribal Council. In 1999, Baker unsuccessfully ran for Deputy Chief of the Cherokee Nation.
Goingsnake, also spelled Going Snake; in Cherokee, I-na-du-na-i) (Cherokee) was a respected warrior, gifted orator, and prominent political leader of his people. He was born in the vicinity of present-day Nottely Lake, Georgia, then part of the large Cherokee territory.
Evan Jones (1788–1872) was born in Wales, where he worked as a draper and followed the Methodist religion. He married Elizabeth Lanigan and emigrated to the United States in 1821, arriving at Philadelphia. Jones became a Baptist missionary and spent over fifty years as a missionary to the Cherokee people. The Baptist Foreign Mission Board initially sent him and his family to work among the Cherokees living in North Carolina, where he learned to speak and write in the Cherokee language, taught school at the Valley Town Baptist Mission, and became an itinerant preacher. Jones volunteered to lead one group of Cherokees to Indian Territory, when they were expelled from their ancestral homeland by the U.S. government. When they finally arrived, he reestablished the Baptist Mission and school and resumed his missionary activities. With the help of his son, John Buttrick Jones, he continued his work preaching, translating religious books, and serving as an advocate for the Cherokees. One author claims that Evan and his son "...converted more American Indians to Christianity than any other Protestant missionaries in America".
The Cherokee Immersion School is a Cherokee language immersion school in Park Hill, Oklahoma, with a Tahlequah post office address. It is for children during pre-school to grade 8.
Chuck Hoskin Jr. is a Cherokee-American politician and attorney currently serving as the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation since 2019.
