Native American Cultural Assessment: The Cherokee Essay -- essays rese

The word Cherokee comes from a Creek word "Chelokee" meaning " hoi polloi of a different speech." In their own language the Cherokee called themselves the Aniyunwiya or " genius people" or the Keetoowah, "people of Kituhwa." The Cherokee are perhaps one of the or so interesting of Native American Groups. Their life and culture are most intertwined with early American settlers and the history of our own nations campaign for freedom. In the interest of promoting tolerance and peace, and with regard to the United States governments handling of Native affairs, their story is one that is painful, stoic, and must not be forgotten.The Cherokee people were a large and powerful community. The Cherokees Macro-Siouan- Iroquoian language and their migration legends demonstrate that the tribe originated to the north of their traditional south-eastern homelands. Linguists believe that the Cherokee migrated from the Great Lakes area to the Southeast over three thousand years ago. The Cherokee language is a starting time of the Iroquoian language family, related to Cayuga, Seneca, Onondega, Wyandot-Huron, Tuscarora, Oneida and Mohawk. Original locations of the Cherokee were the southern Appalachian Mountains, including western due north and South Carolina, northern atomic number 31 and Alabama, southwest Virginia, and the Cumberland Basin of Tennessee, Kentucky, and northern Alabama. The Cherokee sometimes refer to themselves as Ani-Kituhwagi, "the people of Kituhwa". Kituhwa was the name of an ancient city, located ripe present Bryson City, NC, which was the center of the Cherokee Nation. big before Columbus discovered the " peeled World" or Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto arrived, the Cherokee territory stretched from the Ohio River to the north, and southward into Georgia and Alabama. Their homelands extended over 135,000 square miles. Cherokee villages had populations of about 350 to 600 persons. Before contact wi th Europeans, families reinforced round, populace-covered homes for the winter. For the warmer summers they built larger, rectangular homes. The rectangular homes had upright poles forming a framework. The outmost covering was bark, wood or woven siding coated with earth and clay. The Cherokee were primarily an agricultural people. They relied heavily on corn, beans, and squash, supplemented by hunting and the forum of wil... ...r near the North Carolina reservation. Cherokee tribal governments ware fairly liberal membership standards compared to other tribes. Some population estimates exceed 370,000, which would make the Cherokee the largest Native American group in the United StatesIt is amazing that through European epidemics, attempts to adopt eradicate and remove, that any Cherokee are left today. Despite all they have endured and lost, Cherokee levels of education and living standard ranks among the highest of all Native American tribes. I am proud to be an American cit izen. I am too especially proud that my Mothers Great-Grandmother, a descendant of pencil lead of Tears survivors, was Cherokee. BIBLIOGRAPHYThomas E. Mails, The Cherokee People The Story of the Cherokees from Earliest Origins to Contemporary generationMerwyn S. Garbarino, Native American HeritageThe Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians http//www.charweb.org/neighbors/na/cherokee.htm mob Mooney, History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the CherokeesMorris L. Wardell, A Political History of the Cherokee Nation 1838-1907Collier, Peter. When Shall They Rest? The Cherokees Long Struggle with America