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

The word Cherokee comes from a creek word "Chelokee" meaning "people of a different speech." In their take in language the Cherokee c all tolded themselves the Aniyunwiya or "principal people" or the Keetoowah, "people of Kituhwa." The Cherokee ar perhaps peerless of the most interesting of Native American Groups. Their life-time and culture are closely intertwined with early American settlers and the history of our own nations struggle for freedom. In the interest of promoting tolerance and peace, and with cipher 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 justly tribe. The Cherokees Macro-Siouan- Iroquoian language and their migration legends demonstrate that the tribe originated to the north of their traditional Southeastern homelands. Linguists trust that the Cherokee migrated from the Great Lakes area to the Southeas t over three thousand historic period ago. The Cherokee language is a branch of the Iroquoian language family, related to Cayuga, Seneca, Onondega, Wyandot-Huron, Tuscarora, Oneida and Mohawk. Original locations of the Cherokee were the Confederate Appalachian Mountains, including western North and South Carolina, northern Georgia and Alabama, south-west 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 call in of an ancient city, located near present Bryson City, NC, which was the center of the Cherokee Nation. Long originally Columbus discovered the "New World" or Spanish venturer 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 more or less 350 to 600 person s. Before contact with Europeans, families built round, earth-covered homes for the winter. For the warmer summers they built larger, rectangular homes. The rectangular homes had upright poles forming a framework. The outer covering was bark, wood or distort 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 gathering of wil... ...r near the North Carolina reservation. Cherokee tribal governments mother fairly liberal membership standards compared to other tribes. Some population estimates return 370,000, which would make the Cherokee the largest Native American group in the United StatesIt is painful that through European epidemics, attempts to assimilate eradicate and remove, that any Cherokee are left field 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 citizen. I am also especially proud that my Mothers Great-Grandmother, a descendant of Trail of Tears survivors, was Cherokee. BIBLIOGRAPHYThomas E. Mails, The Cherokee People The account of the Cherokees from Earliest Origins to Contemporary TimesMerwyn S. Garbarino, Native American HeritageThe east Band of the Cherokee Indians http//www.charweb.org/neighbors/na/cherokee.htmJames Mooney, archives, 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