The Cherokee originally lived in the southeastern United States, with their ancestral homeland spanning parts of what are now North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. Their territory covered a large stretch of the southern Appalachian Mountains and the fertile river valleys surrounding them. Today, most Cherokee people live in northeastern Oklahoma or on a smaller reservation in western North Carolina, the result of a forced relocation in the 1830s that split the nation in two.
The Ancestral Homeland
For hundreds of years before European contact, the Cherokee occupied one of the largest territories of any Native nation in the Southeast. Their lands stretched across the mountain ridges and valleys of the southern Appalachians, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of present-day North Carolina westward into Tennessee, and south into parts of Georgia and Alabama. Some estimates place the full extent of Cherokee-claimed territory at over 100,000 square miles at its peak, also reaching into portions of South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky.
Cherokee communities were organized into small, self-sufficient villages typically located in fertile river valleys. These valleys provided rich soil for growing corn, beans, and squash, along with easy access to water and fish. The surrounding mountains offered abundant game and plant resources. Villages were loosely grouped into geographic regions, sometimes called the Lower Towns, Middle Towns, Valley Towns, and Overhill Towns, each cluster associated with a different river system in the Appalachian region.
Centuries of Shrinking Territory
Between 1790 and 1830, the Cherokee and other southeastern tribes signed many treaties with the United States, each one ceding more land. Even after giving up millions of acres through successive agreements with the British and then the U.S. government, the Cherokee in the 1820s still occupied parts of the homelands they had lived in for centuries. They had adopted a written constitution, a syllabary for their language, a national newspaper, and a centralized government modeled partly on American institutions. Their capital was at New Echota in present-day Gordon County, Georgia.
None of that protected them. The discovery of gold on Cherokee land in Georgia in 1828, combined with pressure from white settlers and the election of Andrew Jackson, set the stage for removal. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 gave the federal government authority to negotiate (and ultimately force) the relocation of all southeastern tribes to territory west of the Mississippi River.
The Trail of Tears and the Split
In 1838, the U.S. Army began rounding up Cherokee families at gunpoint, holding them in over 20 stockade forts across Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina before marching them west. Detachments departed from collection points in southeastern Tennessee, with one of the first groups leaving from Rattlesnake Springs near Charleston, Tennessee. Over 10,000 Cherokee passed through Port Royal, Tennessee, the last place many of them slept in their home state before crossing into Kentucky on the long route to Indian Territory.
The journey covered roughly 1,000 miles overland through Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. Thousands died from disease, exposure, and exhaustion along the way. The Cherokee remember this forced march as the Trail of Tears.
Not all Cherokee left. A small group living along the Oconaluftee Creek in the mountains of western North Carolina managed to remain, partly because some held legal exemptions from removal. They became the nucleus of what is today the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
Where the Cherokee Live Today
There are now three federally recognized Cherokee tribes, each with its own government and territory.
The Cherokee Nation, by far the largest, is headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Its reservation encompasses all or parts of 14 counties in northeastern Oklahoma: Adair, Cherokee, Craig, Delaware, Mayes, McIntosh, Muskogee, Nowata, Ottawa, Rogers, Sequoyah, Tulsa, Wagoner, and Washington. With over 400,000 enrolled citizens, it is one of the largest tribal nations in the United States.
The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians is also based in Tahlequah and shares much of the same geographic area in northeastern Oklahoma, though it operates as a separate sovereign nation with its own enrollment and governance.
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians lives on the Qualla Boundary in western North Carolina, a roughly 50,000-acre land base centered around Oconaluftee Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains. The town of Cherokee, North Carolina, serves as its seat of government. This community descends from those who avoided or resisted removal in 1838, and it remains the only Cherokee presence in the original Appalachian homeland.
A Brief Presence in Texas
One lesser-known chapter: a group of Cherokee migrated into East Texas by the early 1820s, settling on the upper branches of the Neches, Angelina, and Sabine rivers north of Nacogdoches. They cleared land and established farms in what was then sparsely inhabited territory. The Republic of Texas proposed a land grant for the Cherokee in 1836 in Smith County and surrounding areas, but the Texas government ultimately refused to honor it and expelled the Cherokee from the state by 1839. Archaeological sites from this period have been found in the Sabine River basin near present-day Tyler, Texas.