Cherokee Language And Alphabet Mythology Famous Cherokee

The Cherokee (Cherokee: ᏣᎳᎩᏱ, Tsa-La-Gi-Yi) are a people native to North America who first inhabited what is now the eastern and southeastern United States before most were forcefully moved to the Ozark Plateau. They were one of the tribes referred to by Native Americans as the Five Civilized Tribes.

Bands recognized by the United States government, but representing only 250,000 Cherokees, have headquarters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma (Cherokee Nation, and United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians), and at Cherokee, North Carolina (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians).

State-recognized Cherokee tribes have headquarters in Georgia and Alabama. Other large and small non-recognized Cherokee organizations are located in Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and other locations in the United States.

The name Cherokee is an old pronunciation of Tsalagi, which is the name for the Cherokees in the Creek language, as well as the term now most commonly used by the Cherokee. The name which the Cherokees originally used for themselves is Aniyunwiya. The term Cherokee was borne out of a now-extinct pronunciation of the name Tsalagi as Cha-ra-gi, which eventually shifted into the English word, Cherokee.

1 Language and Alphabet

The CherokeeAlternate meanings: Cherokee (disambiguation The Cherokee (Cherokee: , Tsa-La-Gi-Yi) are a people native to North America who first inhabited what is now the eastern and southeastern United States before most were forcefully moved to the Ozark Plateau. speak an Iroquoian language which is polysynthetic and is written in a syllabaryA syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary typically represents an optional consonant sound followed by a vowel sound. In a true syllabary there is no systematic graphic invented by SequoyahSequoyah , or George Guess or Gist (1760 1843), the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary. Sequoyah is said to have been born to a Virginian fur trader and the daughter of a Cherokee chief in the village of Tuskegee, Tennessee. He and his mother were abandon. For years, many people wrote transliterated Cherokee on the Internet or used poorly intercompatible fonts to type out the syllabary. However, since the fairly recent addition of the Cherokee syllables to Unicode, the Cherokee language is experiencing a renaissance in its use on the Internet. There is now even a Cherokee-language Wikipedia.

2 Mythology

See: Cherokee mythologyThe Cherokee are a tribe of Native Americans who live in the southeastern United States. Recent archeological discoveries by archaeologist/ethnologist Dr. Tim Jones of the University of Arizona place the Cherokee on the Ozark Plateau immediately after the

3 Famous Cherokee

There were several famous Cherokees in American history, including SequoyahSequoyah , or George Guess or Gist (1760 1843), the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary. Sequoyah is said to have been born to a Virginian fur trader and the daughter of a Cherokee chief in the village of Tuskegee, Tennessee. He and his mother were abandon, who invented the writing system, and American humorist Will RogersThis page relates to the humorist; for others with similar names see William Rogers (disambiguation). Will Rogers ( November 4, 1879 August 15, 1935) was an American humorist and entertainer. Born in Indian Territory (he was part Cherokee) in what would l. Sequoyah's contribution in inventing the Cherokee writing system is all the more remarkable in that it has not been duplicated by any single linguist before or since; although himself illiterate, Sequoyah grasped the significance of written communication and after a great effort over a period of years succeeded in producing a means of written communication for the Cherokee language.

4 History

Beginning at about the time of the American Revolutionary WarThe American Revolutionary War ( 1775 1783), also known as the American War of Independence was a war fought between Great Britain and revolutionaries within thirteen of her North American colonies. The war, which eventually widened far beyond British Nor, divisions over continued accommodation of encroachments by white settlers, despite repeated violations of previous treaties, caused some Cherokee to begin to leave the Cherokee Nation. These dissidents became known as the Chickamauga. Led by Chief Dragging Canoe, the Chickamauga made alliances with the Shawnee and engaged in raids against colonial settlements, aided by the British.

See: Trail of Tears

Cherokees were displaced from their ancestral lands in North Georgia and the Carolinas primarily as a result of the gold rush around Dahlonega, Georgia in the 1830's.

Once the Cherokees reached Indian Territory, tensions ran high and the suspension of the Cherokee Blood Law was ignored. On June 22, 1839, after the adjournment of a tribal meeting, some of the prominent signers of the Treaty of New Echota were killed, including the drafter of the Blood Law, Major Ridge, along with John Ridge and Elias Boudinot. This started 15 years of civil war amongst the Cherokees. One of the notable survivors was Stand Watie, who became a Confederate general during the American Civil War. The Cherokees were one of the five "civilized tribes" that concluded treaties with, and were recognized, by the Confederate States of America.

Other Cherokees in western North Carolina served as part of Thomas' Legion, a unit of approximately 1,100 men of both Cherokee and white origin, fighting primarily in Virginia, where their battle record was outstanding. Thomas' Legion was the last Confederate unit to surrender in North Carolina, at Waynesville, NC on May 9, 1865.

5 Recent news

On June 14 2004, the Cherokee National Tribal Council voted to officially define marriage as a union between man and woman, thereby outlawing gay marriage. This was a decision made in response to an application for a union of a lesbian couple that was submitted on May 13. Principal Chief Chad Smith expressed that the motive behind this decision was an effort to paralell the laws in Oklahoma.

6 External reading

Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation, by John Ehle , 1988. ISBN: 0-385-23954-8.

7 External links

Native American tribes Cherokee tribe

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