The Cherokee or Tsalagi (Cherokee: ᏣᎳᎩ, romanized: Tsalagi pronounced [dʒalaˈɡî], endonym: ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, Aniyvwiyaʔi / Anigiduwagi) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their ancestral homelands, living in towns along river valleys in what is now southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, parts of western South Carolina, northern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama, with hunting grounds extending into Kentucky. Together, these lands encompassed approximately 40,000 square miles.
The Cherokee language belongs to the Iroquoian language family. In the 19th century, the ethnographer James Mooney recorded an oral tradition describing the Cherokee as having migrated southward in ancient times from the Great Lakes region, an area historically associated with other Iroquoian peoples. More recent linguistic and archaeological scholarship has proposed an earlier origin. Anthropologist Thomas R. Whyte, writing in 2007, suggested that the proto-Iroquoian language likely originated in the Appalachian region and that the divergence between Northern and Southern Iroquoian languages began approximately 4,000 years ago.
By the 19th century, European American settlers classified the Cherokee as one of the "Five Civilized Tribes" of the Southeast. The Cherokee were primarily agrarian, lived in permanent towns, and adopted certain cultural and technological practices introduced by European Americans. During this period, they also developed their own writing system.
Today, three Cherokee tribes are federally recognized: the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians (UKB) in Oklahoma, the Cherokee Nation (CN) in Oklahoma, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) in North Carolina.
The Cherokee Nation has more than 300,000 enrolled citizens, making it the largest of the 575 federally recognized tribes in the United States. In addition, numerous groups claim Cherokee lineage, some of which are state-recognized. More than 819,000 people identified as having Cherokee ancestry on the U.S. census, although most are not enrolled citizens of any federally recognized tribe.
Of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes, the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band maintain their headquarters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where the majority of their citizens reside. Members of the UKB are primarily descendants of the so-called "Old Settlers," also known as Western Cherokee, who migrated from the Southeast to Arkansas and present-day Oklahoma beginning around 1817, prior to Indian removal. They are closely related to the Cherokee who were later forcibly relocated during the 1830s under the Indian Removal Act. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is based on the Qualla Boundary in western North Carolina and is largely descended from Cherokee ancestors who resisted or avoided removal and remained in the region. Although they relinquished tribal citizenship during this period and became state and U.S. citizens, they reorganized in the late 19th century and achieved federal recognition as a tribe.
A Cherokee-language name for the Cherokee people is Aniyvwiya (ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯ, translating as 'Principal People'). Another Cherokee endonym is Anigiduwagi (ᎠᏂᎩᏚᏩᎩ, translating as 'People from Kituwah'), a reference to Kituwah, the ancient mother town of the Cherokee people. Tsalagi Gawonihisdi (ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ) is the Cherokee name for the Cherokee language.
Numerous theories—none of which are definitive—have been proposed regarding the origin of the name Cherokee. Some scholars suggest it may have originated as a name applied by neighboring tribes in the region.
One of the earliest Spanish transliterations of the name, recorded in 1755, appears as Tchalaque, although the term itself dates to accounts associated with the Hernando de Soto expedition of the mid-16th century. Another theory suggests that Cherokee derives from the Lower Creek word Cvlakke ("chuh-log-gee"), reflecting Creek usage for the Cherokee people who inhabited the southern Appalachian region.
The Iroquois Five Nations, historically based in New York and Pennsylvania, referred to the Cherokee as Oyata'ge'ronoñ ('inhabitants of the cave country'). It has also been suggested that the word Cherokee originated from a Muscogee Creek term meaning 'people of different speech', referencing the linguistic distinction between the two groups. However, Cherokee scholar Jack Kilpatrick disputed this interpretation, arguing instead that the name derives from the Cherokee word tsàdlagí, meaning 'he has turned aside'.
Anthropologists and historians have two main theories of Cherokee origins. One is that the Cherokee, an Iroquoian-speaking people, migrated to Southern Appalachia from northern areas around the Great Lakes in late prehistoric times. The area became territory of the Iroquois (also known as the "Haudenosaunee") nations and other Iroquoian-speaking peoples of the Southeast such as the Tuscarora people of the Carolinas, and the Meherrin and Nottaway of Virginia. The other theory is that the Cherokee had been in the Southeast for thousands of years and that proto-Iroquoian developed there instead of in the north.
Supporting the first theory are recorded conversations of Cherokee elders made by ethnographer James Mooney in the late 19th century, who recounted an oral tradition of their people migrating south from the Great Lakes region in ancient times. They occupied territories where earthwork platform mounds were built by peoples during the earlier Woodland period.
The people of the Middle Woodland period are believed to be ancestors of the historic Cherokee and occupied what is now Western North Carolina, circa 200 to 600 CE. They are believed to have built what is called the Biltmore Mound, found in 1984 south of the Swannanoa River on the Biltmore Estate, which has numerous Native American sites.
Other ancestors of the Cherokee are considered to be part of the later Pisgah phase of South Appalachian Mississippian culture, a regional variation of the Mississippian culture that arose circa 1000 and lasted to 1500 CE. There is a consensus among most specialists in Southeast archeology and anthropology about these dates. But Finger says that ancestors of the Cherokee people lived in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee for a far longer period of time. Additional mounds were built by peoples during this cultural phase. Typically in this region, towns had a single platform mound and served as a political center for smaller villages.
The Cherokee occupied numerous towns throughout the river valleys and mountain ridges of their homelands. What were called the Lower towns were found in what is present-day western Oconee County, South Carolina, along the Keowee River (called the Savannah River in its lower portion). The principal town of the Lower Towns was Keowee. Other Cherokee towns on the Keowee River included Estatoe, Sugartown (Kulsetsiyi), a name repeated in other areas.
In western North Carolina, what were known as the Valley, Middle, and Outer Towns were located along the major rivers of the Tuckasegee, the upper Little Tennessee, Hiwasee, French Broad and other systems. The Overhill Cherokee occupied towns along the lower Little Tennessee River and upper Tennessee River on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains, in present-day southeastern Tennessee.
During the late Archaic and Woodland Period, Native Americans in the region began to cultivate plants such as marsh elder, lambsquarters, pigweed, sunflowers, and some native squash. People created new art forms such as shell gorgets, adopted new technologies, and developed an elaborate cycle of religious ceremonies.
During the Mississippian culture-period (1000 to 1500 CE in the regional variation known as the South Appalachian Mississippian culture), local women developed a new variety of maize (corn) called eastern flint corn. It closely resembled modern corn and produced larger crops. The successful cultivation of corn surpluses allowed the rise of larger, more complex chiefdoms consisting of several villages and concentrated populations during this period. Corn became celebrated among numerous peoples in religious ceremonies, especially the Green Corn Ceremony.