The Cherokee Tribe

Some say that the Cherokee are a people united across two nations; others that they are divided by two nations. These two nations have existed for the past 150 years. They are the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma. The reason these two nations exist today is an important part of Cherokee history.

Cherokee arrow

In the Pre-Columbian era the Cherokee lived in the area that is now broadly western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee and northern Georgia; although
their hunting grounds and their trading routes were much further afield than that. They had lived in this area for probably about a thousand years before their first contact with Europeans in the early sixteenth century. That contact would be sparse and would leave Cherokee society little changed for the first 300 years.

Cherokee Indians lived in small communities, usually located in fertile river bottoms. Homes were wooden frames covered with woven vines and saplings plastered with mud. Each village consisted of up to 50 log and mud huts grouped around the town square, called the Council House, where ceremonial and public meetings were held. The council house was seven-sided to represent the seven clans of the Cherokee Indians: Bird, Paint, Deer, Wolf, Blue, Long Hair, and Wild Potato. Each tribe elected two chiefs -- a Peace Chief who counseled during peaceful times and a War Chief who made decisions during times of war. However, the Chiefs did not rule absolutely. Decision making was a more democratic process, with tribal members having the opportunity to voice concerns.

Cherokee man
European expansion and the consequent need for greater trade brought mass contact beginning in the early nineteenth century. Contrary to much "documented" history, these settlers found a largely peaceful people, rich in culture and, some would argue, more advanced in their democracy and political organization. For example, future generations were represented in the political process. Women were not only welcome at decision-making council meetings, they were active political members of the community.

The Cherokee traditionally practiced a monotheistic form of Animism, which, perhaps, helped in making initial contact relatively successful for both them and early European settlers. It is also undoubtedly a factor in their rapid conversion to Christianity; very few Cherokee practiced their religion after this wave of contact and almost none do today.

Cherokee Wedding

Cherokee Nation has a marriage law, and Cherokee couples are allowed to marry under this law instead of the State marriage laws. This is because Cherokee Nation is a sovereign government. The couple is not required to obtain a license; however, the person conducting the ceremony must be licensed by the Cherokee Nation in order to do so.

Because clanship is matrilineal in the Cherokee society, it is forbidden to marry within one’s own clan. Because the woman holds the family clan, she is represented at the ceremony by both her mother (or clan mother) and oldest brother.

But one of the most well-known figures in Cherokee history had been born a generation before. Sequoyah, a man of French-Cherokee descent is the only person to invent a writing system for any indigenous North American language. It should not be surprising to learn that this was a huge undertaking that took twelve years to accomplish. Technically a syllabary - because each written character represents a syllable in the spoken language - his writing system is the Cherokee alphabet to this day. Both nations use this alphabet to write, for example, street signs on Cherokee land.