The name Cherokee comes from a Creek word Chelokee meaning people of a different speech. In their own language the Cherokee originally called themselves the Aniyunwiya (or Anniyaya) principal people or the Keetoowah (or Anikituaghi, Anikituhwagi) people of Kituhwa. Although they usually accept being called Cherokee, many prefer Tsalagi from their own name for the Cherokee Nation (Tsalagihi Ayili). The original location of the Cherokee was in the southern Appalachian Mountains: including western North and South Carolina, northern Georgia and Alabama, southwest Virginia, and the Cumberland Basin of Tennessee, Kentucky, and northern Alabama. They moved to Texas from the east around 1823. The Cherokee became the dominant Indian culture in Texas. They were considered one of the five civilized tribes because they had become more European or American in their culture than indian.

But they were still indians and the Anglos wanted all the land. In 1839 the Cherokee were forced out of Texas in to Oklahoma. In the 1970s the Cherokee Nation once again became a federally recognized sovereign nation, just as it had been for much of the nineteenth century. The nation, with its capital at Tahlequah, Oklahoma, has a population of 165,000 spread over fourteen counties in the northeastern corner of the state. Another 10,500 Cherokees, known as the Eastern Band, occupy the 56,000-acre Qualla Boundary Reservation in North Carolina. The town of Cherokee, located fifty miles west of Asheville, is the hub of that reservation. In the 1980 federal census, a total of 1,366,676 people across the United States identified themselves as Cherokees. The Cherokee Nation preserves tribal culture and seeks economic opportunities to provide a better future for its members.

For more on the Cherokee, History of the Cherokee is a great site.

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