Cherokee
Cherokee
Native American Genealogy
6 November 1999 The American Indian CD-Rom (link sited added 20 September 1998 So Your Grandmother was a Cherokee Princess Native American Tribal Histories Lee ...
Native Americans -- Cherokee Indians
The Cherokee museum is located next to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Links to other Cherokee and Native American web sites. ...
Native Americans in North Georgia
After losing control of the northern third of the state to the Cherokee, this Native American Confederation lost the rest of it's land to white Georgians. ...
The Trail of Tears - Cherokee Indians forcibly removed from North ...
...lands for years, the Gold Rush of 1829 brought thousands of people into the Cherokee Nation. Native Americans in Georgia An index of American Indian pages on ...
BackToTheBlanket Journal HomePage
I'm Day Starr, a Wolf Clan, Onondaga/Cherokee Woman. I am also the editor of "Back To The Blanket" a monthly Cherokee/Native American journal. ...
CHEROKEE NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN MUSLIMS
Band of Cherokee Indians in New York City. There are other Muslims in our group. For the most part, not many people are aware of the Native American contact ...
American Indians: Cherokee, Apache, Navajo, Cheyenne, Pueblo ...
...of the American Indian will always endure. Learn more about the Apache, Blackfoot, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Lakota, and Pueblo tribes. Read about native legends ...
Native Americans
...next by stories and songs, in 1828 a Cherokee named Sequoyah decided to develop a native alphabet ... as editor for the very first American Indian newspaper ...
Cherokee Native American Graphics Design
...opy®ight 2002-2004 Cherokee Native American Graphic's Design™.
Cherokee Observer - 1992-2003, american indian, native american ...
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Native American Research (Cherokee) at TSLA
Tennessee State Library and Archives. Historical and Genealogical Information. SUGGESTIONS FOR NATIVE AMERICAN RESEARCH (CHEROKEE). 1817-1819 Removal - Sources. ...
History of the Cherokee
Cherokee History Links: Other websites with Cherokee historical information. Links to related websites including Native American events websites. ...
Guthrie Indian Art Studios- Native American Art: Cherokee Indian ...
Cherokee indian art history and stories, themes include the Trail of Tears and other important events in Cherokee history,native american dolls and gifts,. ...
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Grandmother Was a Cherokee Princess? Source List for Genealogy Research Tracing Your Roots USGenWeb USGenWeb Census Project - Native American WhoWhere Wichita ...
Index of Native American Language Resources on the Internet
Native American Language Center Native American Studies Dept ... Native Languages of Arizona Native Languages page ... with fonts available for: Cherokee Cree Hawaiian ...
Cherokee Messenger - Native American Herbal Remedies
Native American Herbal Remedies. Asthma. Skunk Cabbage. ... Childbirth. To Speed Childbirth: Partridgeberry. The Cherokee used a tea of the boiled leaves. ...
Native Americans
Talking Leaves - Cherokee Alphabet; The Cherokee Nation; The Native American Bedtime-Story Collection; The Spanish Empire - Its effect on Native Americans. ...
WebRing: hub
...technologist. He is also a Cherokee. His personal ... and webring systems. It also has a section that celebrates his Native American heritage. ...
Native American DNA Testing Project - Cherokee Native American ...
...people of Cherokee lineage are unenrolled descendants of the Cherokee Indian Tribes ... of genetic genealogy to determine absolute proof of Native American Blood. ...
Cherokee and Native American Links
CHEROKEE AND NATIVE AMERICAN LINKS. Please let me know if you find inoperable links! HISTORY Important Dates in Cherokee History ...
Cherokee Genealogy
...lines, and associated surnames)~. Bookstore. Genealogy Links. Arkansas Ancestry. Main Genealogy Page. Cherokee and Native American Links. ...
Native American Authors: Cherokee Tribe
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Native American
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Cherokee Art, Books, Music, Artwork,Pottery and Crafts
Cherokee Gift Store showcasing Cherokee and Native American Artwork,Books,Music, Artwork,Pottery and Crafts. Visit our Native American Art Gallery. ...
Native American Genealogy
...scroll down for the heading "Native Americans" Cyndi's List of Native American Genealogical Links on the Internet. LINKS TO CHEROKEE GENEALOGY WEBSITES. ...
Native American, the Cherokee
...the DeSoto expedition in the mid 1500s introduced epidemics which wiped out 75% of the Native American population. In the 1670s the Cherokee population was ...
Tsalagi and other Native Links
Yunwiya. Lots of great links. Back to the Blanket, a Cherokee/Native American Journal in its fifth year, DayStar is the editor. Tsalagi ...
Homework Center - Native American Sites
...[Cherokee] Native Americans in North Georgia http://ngeorgia.com/history/ findex.shtml Detailed history of the people and culture. ...
MSN Encarta - Cherokee
In 1828 they published the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, which also used the syllabary. IV, Contemporary Life. Print Preview of Section ...
Native American Times - America's Largest Independent, Native ...
Gates Millennium Scholar Enjoying First Semester of College Cherokee student Ashley Kirby ... carved-out some time to talk with the Native American Times Friday. ...
EarthBow
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Cherokee Native American Culture
Cherokee Native American Culture. The history of Native American Indians' interaction with the English colonists of Virginia dates ...
The African
Treaties Pertaining to Black Indians. Cherokee Treaty of 1866 Freeing the Slaves. ... The African-Native American Bookstore. (Coming Soon!). ...
Cherokee and other Native Americans from the Blue Ridge
Native American. Harman Music Eastern Woodland Cherokee writer, CD, with voice and music, which is a segment of the Book: Visions, Feathers and Sandstones, by ...
Cherokee, Native American language
Related content from HighBeam Research on: Cherokee, Native American language. OU is national leader in Native American language ...
Cherokee Jewelry - Native American Jewelry, Braclets, Earrings
We specialize in hand-made Native American Jewelry by Cherokee silversmith Jimmie Warnell. Check out our great range of pendants ...
Genealogy Resources on the Internet - Native American Mailing ...
CHEROKEE-SURNAMES. A mailing list for the discussion and sharing of information regarding Native American surnames associated with the Cherokee Nation. ...
Native American Resources
Native American Resources. General Resources. ... Cherokee. Send an e-mail to CHEROKEE-L-REQUEST@rootsweb.com for a helpful mail list. ...
Online Native American Indian Genealogy Records & Databases
Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek & Seminole; Delaware Indians who were adopted by the Cherokee are also included. Rootsweb's Native American Database includes Cherokee ...
NativeTech: Native American Food and Recipes by Type of Dish
Shoshone Bannock; Native American Bacon Cherokee; Rainy Day Fish Chowder Haida - Tlingit; Salmon on a Stick Tuliap Indian, WA; Salmon ...
NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE
Ani Gasaguali of Alabama - a non-profit cultural organization Cherokee & Native American Links Another American Native's Page Cherokee Cherokees of California ...
Cherokee Language and the Cherokee Indian Culture (Tsalagi, Tsa-la ...
Cherokee Nation. Noksi Press: Publishing books about Cherokee language and culture and contemporary Native American issues. White Bear ...
Native American Wisdom
...it and all we hold dear.". Charles Hicks, Tsalagi (Cherokee) Vice Chief of the Trail of Tears, Nov. 4, 1838. NATIVE AMERICAN LINKS. ...
First Nations Peoples by Snowhawk
...~ Are you stuck in frames? Use this link to break free! ~. First Nations Peoples. I am Tsalagi, also known as Cherokee. ("Cherokee ...
Indian Health Service : Native American Resources
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Native American Ancestry - Indian Heritage & Genealogy - American ...
Specializing in proving Native American ancestry and Indian heritage & genealogy for tribes such as the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Crow, Seminole and ...
Native American Lore Index
Below are links to several stories of Native American Indian Lore from ... If you have a story of Native Indian Lore you ... Cherokee for Greetings Friend, welcome home ...
South Carolina SC - Indians, Native Americans - Cherokee
Cherokee Language; Cherokee Ancestry; Hall, Loretta "Cherokee." Gale Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. Vol. 1. Eds.Sharon Malinowski and Anna Sheets. ...
Native Americans
...of the 102 Native American nations and associations. Each picture includes a brief historical and geographical sketch of the tribe. Cherokee Language Lessons ...
The Cherokee are a people native to North America who at time of European contact in the 16th century inhabited what is now the eastern and southeastern United States before most were forcefully moved to the Ozark Plateau. They were one of the tribes referred to by Native Americans as the Five Civilized Tribes.
Bands and naming
Bands recognized by the United States government, but representing only 250,000 Cherokees, have headquarters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma (the Cherokee Nation), and United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians and at Cherokee, North Carolina (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians). State-recognized Cherokee tribes have headquarters in Georgia and Alabama. Other large and small non-recognized Cherokee organizations are located in Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and other locations in the United States.
A 1984 KJRH-TV documentary, "Spirit of the Fire" called the Keetoowah Nighthawk Society the "spiritual core" of the nation in reference to the traditional ceremonies and rituals practiced and maintained by the Keetoowah. Redbird Smith was an influential Nighthawk member and the group revitalized traditional spirituality among Cherokees, beginning in the 19th century. Today there are seven ceremonial dance grounds in Oklahoma and these either belong to the Keetoowah tradition or the Four Mothers Society.
The origin of the term "Cherokee" is not exactly known. One view is that the name Cherokee is an old pronunciation of Chillokee ('cave dwellers'), which is the name (derogatory?) for the Cherokees in the Creek language, as well as the term now most commonly used by the Cherokee themselves, Tsalagi. An early spelling of "Cherokee" is "Chelohi," which means "I am of the Earth" in Cherokee. The name which the Cherokees originally used for themselves is Aniyvwiyai ('principal people').
Language and writing system
The Cherokee speak an Iroquoian language which is polysynthetic and is written in a syllabary invented by Sequoyah. For years, many people wrote transliterated Cherokee on the Internet or used poorly intercompatible fonts to type out the syllabary. However, since the fairly recent addition of the Cherokee syllables to Unicode, the Cherokee language is experiencing a renaissance in its use on the Internet. There is now a Cherokee-language Wikipedia.
History
Beginning at about the time of the American Revolutionary War, divisions over continued accommodation of encroachments by white settlers, despite repeated violations of previous treaties, caused some Cherokee to begin to leave the Cherokee Nation in the late 1700's. These early dissidents would eventually move across the Mississippi River to areas that would later become the states of Arkansas and Missouri. Their settlments were established on the St. Francis and the White Rivers by 1800. Eventually, there were such large numbers of Cherokees in these areas the US Government established a Cherokee Reservation located in Arkansas, with boundaries from north of the Arkansas River up to the southern bank of the White River. Many of these dissidents became known as the Chickamauga. Led by Chief Dragging Canoe, the Chickamauga made alliances with the Shawnee and engaged in raids against colonial settlements. Other Cherokee leaders who lived in Arkansas were The Bowl, Sequoyah, Spring Frog and The Dutch.
By the late 1820's, the Territory of Arkansas had designs on acquiring the land held by the Arkansas Cherokees. A delegation of Arkansas Cherokees went to Washington, D.C., and were forced to sign a treaty to vacate the Arkansas Reservation. Arkansas Cherokees had two choices: cooperate with the US government and move to Indian Territory (later Oklahoma) or defy the US Government and refuse to leave the Arkansas Reservation area. Around 1828, the tribe split, some going to Indian Territory. Others disobeyed the US Government and stayed on the old Reservation lands in Arkansas. Those who stayed on the old Arkansas Cherokee Reservation lands have lobbied the US Government since the early 1900's to be considered a Federally recognized Cherokee tribe. The US Government has ignored their pleas. Today, there are thousands of Cherokees living in Arkansas or Southern Missouri who are relatives of these pre-Trail of Tears Cherokee. (see "We Are Not Yet Conquered" by Beverly Northrup, "The Cherokee People" by Thomas E. Mails, "Myths of The Cherokee" by James Mooney, and The Lost Cherokee Nation)
John Ross was an important figure in the history of the Cherokee tribe. His father emigrated from Scotland prior to the Revolutionary War. His mother was a quarter-blood Cherokee woman whose father was also from Scotland. He began his public career in 1809. The Cherokee Nation was founded in 1820, with elected public officials. John Ross became the chief of the tribe in 1828 and remained the chief until his death.
Cherokees were displaced from their ancestral lands in North Georgia and the Carolinas because of rapidly expanding white population, as well as a Gold Rush around Dahlonega, Georgia in the 1830's. See: Indian Removal, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, and Trail of Tears.
Samuel Carter, author of Cherokee Sunset, writes, "Then ... there came the reign of terror. From the jagged-walled stockades the troops fanned out across the Nation, invading every hamlet, every cabin, rooting out the inhabitants at bayonet point. The Cherokees hardly had time to realize what was happening as they were prodded like so many sheep toward the concentration camps, threatened with knives and pistols, beaten with rifle butts if they resisted."2
Once the Cherokees reached Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), tensions ran high and the suspension of the Cherokee Blood Law was ignored. On June 22, 1839, after the adjournment of a tribal meeting, some of the prominent signers of the Treaty of New Echota were assassinated, including the drafter of the Blood Law, Major Ridge, along with John Ridge and Elias Boudinot. This started 15 years of civil war amongst the Cherokees. One of the notable survivors was Stand Watie, who became a Confederate general during the American Civil War. The Cherokees were one of the five "civilized tribes" that concluded treaties with, and were recognized, by the Confederate States of America.
In 1848 a group of Cherokee set out on an expedition to California looking for new settlement lands. The expedition followed the Arkansas River upstream to Rocky Mountains in present-day Colorado, then followed the base of mountains northward into present-day Wyoming before turning westward. The route become known as the Cherokee Trail. The group, which undertook gold prospecting in California, returned along the same route the following year, noticing placer gold deposits in tributaries of the South Platte. The discovery went unnoticed for a decade but eventually became one of the primary sources of the Colorado Gold Rush of 1859.
Other Cherokees in western North Carolina served as part of Thomas' Legion, a unit of approximately 1,100 men of both Cherokee and white origin, fighting primarily in Virginia, where their battle record was outstanding. Thomas' Legion was the last Confederate unit to surrender in North Carolina, at Waynesville, North Carolina on May 9, 1865.
The Dawes Act of 1887 broke up the tribal land base. Under the Curtis Act of 1898, Cherokee courts and governmental systems were abolished by the US Federal Government. These and other acts were designed to end tribal sovereignty to pave the way for Oklahoma Statehood in 1907. The Federal government appointed chiefs to the Cherokee Nation, often just long enough to sign a treaty. However, the Cherokee Nation recognized it needed leadership and a general convention was convened in 1938 to elect a Chief. They choose J. B. Milam as principal chief, and as a goodwill guesture Franklin Delano Roosevelt confirmed the election in 1941.
W. W. Keeler was appointed chief in 1949 but as federal government adopts the self-determination policy, the Cherokee Nation was able to rebuild its government and W. W. Keeler was elected chief by the people, via a Congressional Act signed by President Nixon. Keeler, who was also the President of Phillips Petroleum was succeeded by Ross Swimmer, Wilma Mankiller, Joe Byrd and Chad Smith who is currently the chief of the Nation.
The United Keetoowah Band took a different track than the Cherokee Nation and received federal recognition after the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. They are descended from the Old Settlers, or Cherokees that moved west before Removal, and the tribe requires a quarter blood quantum for enrollment.
The modern Cherokee Nation
The Environment
Today the Cherokee Nation is a leader in the environmental protection field. Since 1992 the Nation has served as the lead for the Inter-Tribal Environmental Council (ITEC).The mission of ITEC is to protect the health of Native Americans, their natural resources, and their environment as it relates to air, land, and water. To accomplish this mission ITEC provides technical support, training and environmental services in a variety of environmental disciplines. Currently, there are thirty-nine (39) ITEC member tribes in Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas.
Gay marriage
On June 14, 2004, the Cherokee Nation Tribal Council voted to officially define marriage as a union between man and woman, thereby outlawing gay marriage. This was a decision made in response to an application for a union of a lesbian couple that was submitted on May 13. Furthermore, the decision kept Cherokee law in line with Oklahoma state law, which outlawed gay marriage as the result of a popular referendum on a constitutional amendment outlawing it in 2004. Numerous elders were consulted and no one could find concrete examples of same-sex marriage in Cherokee traditions, although same-sex cohabition occured and both polygamy and divorce were common in pre-contact times.
Famous Cherokee
There were several famous Cherokees in American history, including Sequoyah, who invented the Cherokee writing system. Sequoyah may be the only known person in history to invent a widely used written language single handedly. Sequoyah never learned to speak, read or write the English language. Another famous person with Cherokee ancestry was the humorist Will Rogers. The beautiful actress, Salli Richardson, is part Cherokee, Wes Studi, full-blood and bilingual Cherokee, is well-known actor, and Keely Smith is a popular singer. Famous Cherokee politicians include Chad 'Corntassel' Smith, Wilma Mankiller and Ross Swimmer. The American blues-rock guitarist, Jimi Hendrix, was of Cherokee descent via his paternal grandmother, Nora Rose Moore. Oral Roberts, a Pentecostal evangelist in the 1950's through the 1990's, is also of Cherokee descent. Journalist and writer Sarah Vowell also has Cherokee ancestors. Cherokee Nation tribal member Tommy Wildcat is a famous flutist, receiving the NAMMY award for Flutist of the Year. United Keetoowah Band tribal member Lisa LaRue is a NAMMY nominated recording artist, composer and keyboardist.
Others include: