Cherokee means 'people with another language'. The original name for the Cherokees was Aniyunwiya. 350,000 Cherokee people are still alive today, they live mostly in Oklahoma and North Carolina. Keep in mind, these people were not nomadic, they didn't move around that much, because they were a lot like the Europeans in the way that they had built roads, schools, churches, etc. They also had a representational government, and they were mostly farmers and cattle ranchers.
The most memorable, and terrible, thing that happened to the Cherokee people was the Trail of Tears in the winter of 1838-1839.The Trail of Tears was when the Cherokees were forced to leave there home in the southeast, and pushed all the way to Oklohoma by Andrew Jackson's army. They were not ready to go on a forced 800+ mile march, because they weren't allowed to take anything with them, like shoes. Between 4,000 and 8,000 Cherokees died of many things such as starvation, disease, and, of course, exhaustion.
Personally, I think that Andrew Jackson and his army was way too harsh. They didn't have to move the Cherokees all the way over to Oklahoma nearly 800 miles away. I mean, why would they want to, all of a sudden, move a whole group of Cherokee people? I guess I just don't understand. Maybe it's just because us americans are selfish or something like that, so we moved them because they were on our land, but still, what would this world have been like if they didn't move the native americans? Would there have been states? Would there names have been the same? I don't know, these are questions that, I bet, we all wonder if those were the circumstances.
Cherokee Indians on the Trail of Tears
Map of the different routes that they used to take the Cherokee people to Oklahoma
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