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Cherokee, North American Indians of Iroquoian lineage who constituted one of the largest politically integrated tribes at the time of European colonization. They controlled parts of present-day Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and the western parts of what are now North Carolina and South Carolina.
The History of the Cherokee Nation. European Contact, Settlement, and Land Cessions. The first contact between Cherokees and Europeans was in 1540, when Hernando de Soto and several hundred of his conquistadors traveled through Cherokee territory during their expedition in what is now the southeastern United States.
The Cherokee are members of the Iroquoian language -family of North American indigenous peoples, and are believed to have migrated in ancient times from the Great Lakes area, where most of such language families were located. The migration is recounted in their oral history.
Cherokee and other Native Americans were classified on the colored side and suffered the same racial segregation and disenfranchisement as former slaves. They also often lost their historical documentation for identification as Indians, when the Southern states classified them as colored.
The Cherokee descended from indigenous peoples who originally occupied the southern Appalachian Mountains region in North America, starting around 8000 B.C. Cherokees are part of the Iroquois group of North American Indian tribes, which also includes Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, and Oneida.
Today, the Cherokee people are the largest Native American group in the United States. You can learn more about the Cherokee people and the Trail of Tears by visiting sites along the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.
The Cherokee tribe was originally located in the southeastern part of the continent, in what’s now Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. They first made contact with Europeans in 1540 during the explorations by Hernando DeSoto, beginning a long and complicated history with the white man.