Since earliest contact with European explorers in the 1500s, the Cherokee Nation has been identified as one of the most advanced among Native American tribes. Cherokee culture thrived for thousands of years in the southeastern United States before European contact. After contact, Cherokee society and culture continued to develop, progressing with acquisitions from European settlers. Soon, they had shaped a bicultural government and a society that matched the most "civilized" of the time.

In the 1830s, when gold was discovered in Georgia, the settlers began to covet the Cherokee homelands, and a period of Indian Removal began to make way for more white settlement. In 1838, without warning, thousands of Cherokee men, women and children were rounded up and marched 1,000 miles to Indian Territory--what is now the state of Oklahoma. Thousands died along the way.

Rebuilding In Indian Territory, the Cherokees soon rebuilt their democratic form of government, churches schools, newspapers and businesses. A new constitution was adopted in September of 1839, the same year the final group of Cherokees arrived on the Trail of Tears. Tahlequah, the new Cherokee capital, and Park Hill became hubs of business activity and centers of cultural activity in Indian Territory. In 1844, the Cherokee Advocate, printed in both English and Cherokee, became the first newspaper in Indian Territory and the Cherokee Messenger was its first periodical. Soon, the Cherokee's educational system of 144 elementary schools and two higher education institutions, the Cherokee Male and Female Seminaries, rivaled all others. Other bilingual materials, which had been made possible by Sequoyah's codification of the Cherokee syllabary in 1821, led the Cherokee people to a level of literacy higher than their white counterparts, all before Oklahoma statehood in 1907.

The Cherokees rebuilt their progressive lifestyle from remnants of the society and the culture they were forced to leave behind. The years between the removal and the 1860s were called their Golden Age, a period of prosperity that ended with division over the Civil War. After the Civil War, more Cherokee lands and rights were taken by the government because Chief John Ross has been persuaded to side with the Confederacy during the war. What remained of Cherokee tribal land was divided into individual allotments which were given to Cherokees listed in the census compiled by the Dawes Commission in the late 1890s. Descendants of those original enrollees make up today's Cherokee Nation tribal membership.

Language

The preservation and perpetuation of language is one of the most important aspects of cultural survival. The Cherokee language is spoken today by some 10,000 Cherokees the vast majority who are living near the town of Tahlequah in northeastern Oklahoma and by at least 1,000 Cherokees living in western North Carolina, on a reservation near the town of Cherokee.
May our continued use of their beautiful language serve as a constant reminder that America is built upon the graves of Indians, who's language and descendants may be found everywhere today. Cherokee is related to the Northern Iroquoian language, which includes Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida and Seneca-Cayuga.

Many Cherokees speak their ancestral language in their homes, at churches and at Cherokee stomp grounds. More than 150 years after the Trail of Tears, Cherokee remains one of the most widely spoken Native American languages. To ensure the preservation of the Cherokee language and culture, the Cherokee Nation supports and provides numerous bilingual education programs.

The Cherokee Alphabet
Cherokee Words Page One
Cherokee Words Page Two
Cherokee Words Page Three

Cherokee writing, pictured below, is the creation of Sequoyah, one of the great names in the history of the American Indian. Convinced that the key to the white man's power lay in his possession of a written language, he set about bringing this secret to his own people. In 1821, after twelve years of work, he produced a syllabary of eighty-six characters, representing every sound in the Cherokee language. The system was quickly mastered by thousands of Cherokees and within three years a newspaper began to be published, and a constitution for the Cherokee Nation was drawn up in the Cherokee language.

Sequoyah borrowed many of his characters from English, but since he actually neither spoke nor read English, they represent completely different sounds in the two languages. The letter D, for example, is pronounced a, while h is pronounced ni, W is pronounced la, and Z is pronounced no. But the Sequoyah syllabary has remained in use to the present day, with no modifications considered necessary in 150 years.

The Cherokees when first discovered by De Soto in 1540 were living in the southeastern part of the United States, known today as Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Virginia, North and South Carolina. They had their own tribal government, schools, churches, and were prosperous landowners. Their forced removal in the 1830s to what is now Oklahoma is a dark episode in the history of this country. They endured great hardships during the Civil War, with its destructions, suffering, and tragedy, and finally the dissolution of their tribal government with the coming of Oklahoma Statehood. Yet they rose above these hardships and struggles, and today they contribute greatly to the wealth and stability of this nation and the world.