cherokee north carolina casino burn in 1997

The Cherokee became known as one of the “ Five Civilized Tribes” along with the Chickasaw, Creek, Choctaw, and Seminole nations (see entries).

Over the years the tribe lost many of its people to wars and to diseases brought by white settlers. In the early 2000s there were three major tribal groups and more than fifty other organizations in at least twelve states that claimed to have Cherokee origins.īefore the arrival of Europeans in their territory in 1540 the Cherokee were an agricultural people numbering about 50,000 who controlled 40,000 square miles (103,600 square kilometers) of land. Their traditional enemy was the Chickasaw tribe. Then between three thousand and four thousand years ago, after enduring conflicts with the Iroquois and the Delaware tribes, the Cherokee moved again-this time to the southeastern part of the present-day United States. Many historians believe that the very early ancestors of the Cherokee moved from territory that is now Mexico and Texas to the Great Lakes region. Many people also claim some Cherokee blood 729,533 people said they have a Cherokee ancestor.

In the 2000 census that number dropped to 281,069, but the Chrerokee kept their status as the largest tribe in the United States. Census, 369,979 people identified themselves as Cherokee. From the mid-1600s to the 1730s there were about twenty-five thousand. In 1674 there were an estimated fifty thousand Cherokee. In the early twenty-first century most Cherokee live in northeastern Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

government holds it in trust and considers it a Jurisdictional Service Area. Although it is not a reservation, the U.S. In 2007 tribal lands of the Cherokee Nation spanned 124,000 acres throughout 14 counties in northeastern Oklahoma. The Cherokee originally lived in parts of eight present-day southeastern states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. The name comes from the Creek word chelokee, which means “people of a different speech.” The Cherokee refer to themselves as Ani’-Yun’wiya’, meaning “the real people” or “the principal people” or Tsalagi, which comes from a Choctaw word for “people living in a land of many caves.” The tribe’s original name was “Kituwah,” which is why the traditional group calls itself the United Keetoowah Band.

Cherokee north carolina casino burn in 1997