Cherokee

Cherokee, North American people of Iroquoian lineage who constituted one of the largest politically integrated tribes at the time of European colonization of the Americas. Their name is derived from a Muscogee word meaning “people of different speech”; many prefer to be known as Keetoowah or Tsalagi. They are believed to have numbered some 22,500 individuals in 1650, and they controlled approximately 40,000 square miles (100,000 square km) of the Appalachian Mountains in parts of...