When Europeans came into these mountains, the Cherokee dominated the Southern Appalachians by means of a loose confederacy held together by ties of language, kinship, trade, and custom. The Cherokee were surrounded by hostile groups that shared a common temple mound culture, but belonged to different language families, the Creeks, Catawba, and Chickasaws. In fact, Cherokee is Creek for 'people who speak another language" although they call themselves Aniyunwiya, meaning "the principle people". After 1600, until about 1780, the Cherokee were the dominant power in the Southern Appalachians.
For most of the period of their major influence, the Cherokee were situated in some 70 towns, with a total population of around 20,000, though some estimates exceed ten times that population before European contact. The Indians that de Soto encountered when his expedition of 1540 came through to do the usual, look for gold and utterly destroy native peoples in the name of god, they undoubtedly encountered hosts of Cherokee. Probably, they had moved their southern home from the north, where they had been part of the powerful Iroquois people. The Cherokee speak an Iroquoian language, and linguists believed they separated thousands of years ago. The Cherokee believe that their original principal town in the south was Kituwah in Swain County , NC.
Theodore Roosevelt described the Cherokee as, "a bright, intellegent race, better fitted to follow the 'white man's road' than any other Indians." This was intended as a compliment, but regardless of their supposed ease of acculturation, they were still ultimately forced off their ancestral homeland in the southern Appalachians, the very land Mike and I will be walking, to make room for the cows, pigs and god of the white man. Of course, when the whites first made a treaty with the Cherokee in 1798, the Indians surrendered a part of their land to the Government, who pledged to 'guarantee the remainder of the country forever' into the Indians' keeping. "Forever" to the US government meant about 5 years when dealing with Native Americans.
During the War of 1812, the Cherokee helped the US government defeat the Creeks. Even after their assistance in battle, the land-hungry white men would not let the Cherokee live in peace, forcing them to yield almost 6,000 square miles of forest in the heart of the Smokies (1/4 of what was left to them) to the government in 1819.
In order to keep up with the US, the Cherokee established a Christian religion and a republican form of government with a court system, bicameral legislature and of course a constitution. This government was headed by their President, John Ross, son of a Scottish immigrant and Cherokee mother who herself was half white. John Ross defended the cause of the Cherokee until they were forcibly removed from the government.
Now the Aniyunwiya had a US-style government, religious system, and had adopted agriculture, all they needed was a written language. This was supplied by a man, then obscure, but now famous to history, Sequoyah, who developed a writing system between 1809 and 1821. Emblidge says, "He used characters in an old English spelling book, which he could not read, German printed characters and letters out of a Bible, placing them right side up, upside down, adding a few strokes, curlicues, and symbols of his own invention." Soon all the nation learned his language and adopted the Sequoyan print. A Cherokee newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix was printed in Sequoyan. Cherokee Sequoyan alphabet:
Of course, all these accomplishments and attemps on behalf of the Cherokee to relate to the US government meant nothing and the Southern whites demanded rights to the last bit of land that belonged to the Cherokee nation. They recieved $5,000,000 for their seven million acres and were forced to move to the Western US, where they could keep the land there "forever". Cherokee people were forced by the US military to walk West across the Mississippi to Oklahoma in the dead of winter after their houses had been ransacked and livestock stolen by the white soldiers. Many hundreds died on this Trail of Tears. Emblidge says that President Martin Van Buren, advised Congress that , "all had gone well, the Indians having moved to their new homes unreluctantly. The whole movement was having the happiest of effects."
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