California : large ethnic diaspora community, 22, registered tribal citizens [ 3 ] North Carolina : 16, 0. South Carolina : 3, [ 5 ]. 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 consisting of around 40, square miles. The Cherokee language is part of the Iroquoian language group.
In the 19th century, James Mooney , an early American ethnographer , recorded one oral tradition that told of the tribe having migrated south in ancient times from the Great Lakes region, where other Iroquoian peoples have been based. Whyte, writing in , dated the split among the peoples as occurring earlier. He believes that the origin of the proto-Iroquoian language was likely the Appalachian region , and the split between Northern and Southern Iroquoian languages began 4, years ago.
By the 19th century, White American settlers had classified the Cherokee of the Southeast as one of the " Five Civilized Tribes " in the region. They were agrarian , lived in permanent villages and had begun to adopt some cultural and technological practices of the white settlers. They also developed their own writing system.
The Cherokee Nation has more than , tribal citizens, making it the largest of the federally recognized tribes in the United States. A total of more than , people are estimated to have identified as having Cherokee ancestry on the U.
(mh=_eBd6ZBZH0IaiYor)0.jpg "Anal Girl in Tulsa")
Of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes, the Cherokee Nation and the UKB have headquarters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma , and most of their citizens live in the state. They are related to the Cherokee who were later forcibly relocated there in the s under the Indian Removal Act. They are mostly descendants of ancestors who had resisted or avoided relocation, remaining in the area.
