Cherokee Indians

Cherokee Indian. In the seventeenth century, the Cherooke Indians inhibited what is now the Eastern and Southeastern United States. After the European contact, most were forcibly moved westward to the Ozark Plateau. They were one of the tribes referred to as the Five Civilized Tribes.

Cherokee Indians were displaced from their lands in Northern Georgia and the Carolinas in a period of rapidly expanding white population as well as the discovered of gold on their land in 1828. Various official reason for the removal were given. One was that the Cherokee Indians were not efficiently using their land and the land should be given to white farmers.

Despite the Supreme Court Ruling in their favor,  many in the Cherokee Nation were forcibly relocated West, a migration known as the Trail of Tears or in Cherokee Nona Daul Tsunny (Cherokee:The Trail Where They Cried). This took place after the Indian Removal Act of 1830, although as of 1883, the Cherokee were the last large southern Indian tribe to be removed

John Ross was an important figure in the history of the Cherokee Indians 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 in 1866.

Today the Cherokee Indians have a strong sense of pride in their heritage. The Cherokee rose is now the state flower of Georgia. Today, the largest population of Cherokee Indians live in the state of Oklahoma, where there are three federally recognized Cherokee communities with thousand of residents.