Cherokee History
The Cherokee nation was the largest, and probably the
most important, nation of eastern North America. They did not call themselves
the Cherokee - they called themselves the Ani Chota, which means the people
of Chota, their capital, or the Ani Yunwiya, which means "the main people".
They were probably a Mississippian group,
building burial mounds and towns like other Mississippian people, even though
they did not live right on the Mississippi river and there are some differences
in the way they lived. Probably Cherokee people were originally part of
the Iroquois people, because their language is
related to Iroquois and they themselves believed that they came from the
north-east, but they split off and moved south, probably about 1500 BC,
in the Late Archaic period. After that, during
the Woodland period, the Cherokee lived in south-eastern
North America (mainly modern Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arkansas, but
also South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Alabama).
By around 1000 AD, in the Mississippian period, Cherokee people began to grow corn, squash, and beans for some of their food. They still hunted and gathered, but the farming helped them to settle down in towns and villages.
By around 1000 AD, in the Mississippian period, Cherokee people began to grow corn, squash, and beans for some of their food. They still hunted and gathered, but the farming helped them to settle down in towns and villages.
During the Mississippian
period, Cherokee people were not united under one chief. They lived
in a bunch of small independent city-states.
Probably these city-states were unified as a confederacy, like the Iroquois
confederacy, where they considered themselves one people, and often
made decisions as a group by consensus or by voting. We might consider this
to be a complex chiefdom.
There were at least sixty Cherokee towns, and there may have been more.
Each town had about 300 to 400 people living in it.
To find out more about Cherokee history, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
Cherokee economy
Later Cherokee history
Early Iroquois history
Early Ute history
Early Mississippian history
Early Cree history
North American history
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