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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, southwestern Virginia, edges of western South Carolina, northern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama.
The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by European Americans in the colonial and early federal period in the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminoles. Americans of European descent classified them as "civilized" because they had adopted attributes of the Anglo-American culture. Examples of such colonial attributes adopted by these five tribes included Christianity, centralized governments, literacy, market participation, written constitutions, intermarriage with white Americans, and chattel slavery practices, including purchase of enslaved African Americans. For a period, the Five Civilized Tribes tended to maintain stable political relations with the European Americans, before the United States promoted Indian removal of these tribes from the Southeast.
Wilma Pearl Mankiller was a Native American activist, social worker, community developer and the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, she lived on her family's allotment in Adair County, Oklahoma, until the age of 11, when her family relocated to San Francisco as part of a federal government program to urbanize Native Americans. After high school, she married a well-to-do Ecuadorian and raised two daughters. Inspired by the social and political movements of the 1960s, Mankiller became involved in the Occupation of Alcatraz and later participated in the land and compensation struggles with the Pit River Tribe. For five years in the early 1970s, she was employed as a social worker, focusing mainly on children's issues.
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 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 2023, over 450,000 people were enrolled in the Cherokee Nation.
The Keetoowah Nighthawk Society was a Cherokee organisation formed ca. 1900 that intended to preserve and practice traditional "old ways" of tribal life, based on religious nationalism. It was led by Redbird Smith, a Cherokee National Council and original Keetoowah Society member. It formed in the Indian Territory that was superseded by admission of Oklahoma as a state, during the late-nineteenth century period when the federal government was breaking up tribal governments and communal lands under the Dawes Act and Curtis Act. The Nighthawks arose in response to weakening resolve on the part of Cherokee leaders—including the original Keetoowah Society, a political organization created by Cherokee Native American full bloods, in or about 1859—to continue their resistance on behalf of the Cherokee after the Dawes Commission began forcing the transfer of Oklahoma tribal lands in the Indian Territory to individual ownership in the 1890s.
The Original Keetoowah Society is a 21st-century Cherokee religious organization dedicated to preserving the culture and teachings of the Keetoowah Nighthawk Society in Oklahoma. It has been described as the surviving core of the Cherokee movement of religious nationalism originally led by Redbird Smith in the mid-nineteenth century. After the Cherokee were forced to move to Indian Territory, various groups associated with the Keetoowah Society worked to preserve traditional culture and its teachings.
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.
Talmadge Davis (1962–2005) was a Cherokee artist, who explored historical and military themes in his highly naturalistic paintings.
Cherokee heritage groups are associations, societies and other organizations located primarily in the United States. Such groups consist of persons who do not qualify for enrollment in any of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes. As the Cherokee Nation enrolls all people who can prove descent from a Cherokee ancestor, many of these groups consist of those who claim Cherokee ancestry but have no documentation to prove this heritage. A total of 819,105 Americans claimed Cherokee ancestry in the 2010 Census, more than any other named ancestral tribal group in the Census.
Kituwa or giduwa (Cherokee:ᎩᏚᏩ) is an ancient Native American settlement near the upper Tuckasegee River, and is claimed by the Cherokee people as their original town. An earthwork platform mound, built about 1000 CE, marks a ceremonial site here. The historic Cherokee built a townhouse on top that was used for their communal gatherings and decisionmaking; they replaced it repeatedly over decades. They identify Kituwa as one of the "seven mother towns" in their traditional homeland of the American Southeast. This site is in modern Swain County, North Carolina, in the Great Smoky Mountains.
Samuel Houston Mayes of Scots/English-Cherokee descent, was elected as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory, serving from 1895 to 1899. His maternal grandfather belonged to the Deer clan, and his father was allied with members of the Cherokee Treaty Party in the 1830s, such as the Adair men, Elias Boudinot, and Major Ridge. In the late nineteenth century, his older brother Joel B. Mayes was elected to two terms as Chief of the Cherokee.
The Yowani were a historical group of Choctaw people who lived in Texas. Yowani was also the name of a preremoval Choctaw village.
The Cherokee Male Seminary was a tribal college established in 1846 by the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory. Opening in 1851, it was one of the first institutions of higher learning in the United States to be founded west of the Mississippi River.
Cherokee history is the written and oral lore, traditions, and historical record maintained by the living Cherokee people and their ancestors. In the 21st century, leaders of the Cherokee people define themselves as those persons enrolled in one of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes: The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, The Cherokee Nation, and The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians.
Texas Cherokees were the small settlements of Cherokee people who lived temporarily in what is now Texas, after being forcibly relocated from their homelands, primarily during the time that Spain, and then Mexico, controlled the territory. After the Cherokee War of 1839, the Cherokee communities in Texas were once again forcibly removed to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. When Union troops took control of Cherokee territory in 1863, many "Southern" Cherokees fled to Texas, but after the war, most of them returned to their homes in Indian Territory. Others are part of the multitribal Mount Tabor Indian Community, or Tsalagiyi Nvdagi Tribe which have received commendations for their contributions to the State of Texas.
Redbird Smith (1850–1918) was a traditionalist and political activist in the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory. He helped found the Nighthawk Keetoowah Society, whose members revitalized traditional spirituality among the Cherokee from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century.
The Cherokee Nation of Mexico, also known as the Cherokee Nation of Sequoyah of Mexico, Texas, and U.S.A. Reservation and Church is an organization of individuals who claim descent from Cherokee tribe who migrated to Mexico during the 19th century. They are an unrecognized tribe with a presence in Zaragoza, Coahuila, Mexico. According to Robert J. Conley, the Cherokee Nation of Mexico is recognized by the state of Coahuilla.
Jeanne Rorex-Bridges is painter and illustrator based in Oklahoma. She is a member of the Echota Cherokee Tribe of Alabama, a state-recognized tribe.
Bill Glass Jr. is a Cherokee Nation ceramic artist, sculptor, and public artist, who was named a Cherokee National Treasure in 2009.
References
- ↑ "Home". cherokeesouthwesttownship.org.
- ↑ "Communities – Cherokee Nation Citizens At-Large".
