Cherokee Nation
Traditional Territory
Reservation spanning 14 counties in northeastern Oklahoma (Adair, Cherokee, Craig, Delaware, Mayes, McIntosh, Muskogee, Nowata, Ottawa, Rogers, Sequoyah, Tulsa, Wagoner, and Washington counties)
Overview
The Cherokee Nation is the largest of three federally recognized Cherokee tribes in the United States, headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, with over 466,000 enrolled citizens as of 2024. The tribe includes people descended from members of the Old Cherokee Nation who relocated from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokee forced to relocate on the Trail of Tears, as well as descendants of Cherokee Freedmen and the Natchez Nation. The nation operates under a constitution ratified in 2003, with executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
Historical Notes
Cherokee Nation relocated to Indian Territory due to pressure from the Southeast, with members forced to relocate on the Trail of Tears. After the American Civil War, the United States promised the Cherokee Nation 'a permanent homeland' in an 1866 treaty.
Federal Recognition
The Cherokee Nation hold federal recognition from the United States government, administered through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Federally recognized tribes have a government-to-government relationship with the United States and are eligible for services and protections under federal Indian law. There are currently 574 federally recognized tribal nations in the United States.
Indigenous peoples had inhabited North America for at least 15,000 years before European contact, developing complex societies across every region of the continent. The Mississippian culture, centered on the city of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis, reached its peak around 1100 AD with a population estimated at 10,000 to 20,000 — larger than contemporary London. The Ancestral Puebloans built multi-story stone complexes at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde between the 9th and 13th centuries. The Iroquois Confederacy, formed between roughly 1450 and 1600, united five nations under a constitution that influenced later American democratic thinking. Across the eastern woodlands, the Great Plains, the Pacific Coast, and the Southwest, hundreds of distinct nations maintained sophisticated trade networks, agricultural systems, and governance structures. European contact beginning in the late 15th century introduced epidemic disease — smallpox, measles, influenza — which devastated Indigenous populations by an estimated 50 to 90 percent within a century.
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source: Wikipedia.
Questions about the Cherokee Nation
Everything a full the United States report reveals
Pick any location and Aubrey pulls together 18 strands of its history, each drawn from the record:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
More Native peoples
Browse all 644 peoples ›Conflict records
Indian Wars and frontier conflicts ›Historic sites by state
State history
Archaeological sites
Research Indigenous history near your location
Every Aubrey US report includes Native peoples with documented historical presence within your chosen radius.