The Cherokee are an Iroquoian-language-speaking indigenous nation historically centered in the southeastern United States, notable for the early-nineteenth-century development of the Cherokee syllabary, a full writing system for their language devised by Sequoyah, which produced rapid, well-documented Cherokee-language literacy and the Cherokee Phoenix, one of the first Native American newspapers. The Cherokee were among the tribes forcibly removed from their homeland to Indian Territory under the 1830 Indian Removal Act, a documented and well-established atrocity known as the Trail of Tears, in which a substantial share of those removed died. Today three federally recognized Cherokee tribes exist, the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band, both headquartered in Oklahoma, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina, descended from those who avoided or resisted removal.
Facts
Group TypeSourced to the subject's own accountIndigenous nation/ethnic group 1 Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountNorth America (historically the southeastern United States; today primarily Oklahoma and western North Carolina) 1 Population EstimateSourced to the subject's own accountmore than 400,000 enrolled members across the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes 1 Primary LanguageSourced to the subject's own accountCherokee (Tsalagi), using the Cherokee syllabary devised by Sequoyah in the 1820s 1 Subsistence ModeSourced to the subject's own accountHistorically settled agriculture (corn, beans and squash) combined with hunting, in permanent town-based settlements distinct from more mobile Plains societies. 1 Sources
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