Cherokee
About the Cherokee People
Three thousand years ago there were potters in the southern Appalachian Mountains making cooking vessels of local clay. In those early days the pots were rough. They got more refined and uniform over time. Then about 1900 years ago the potters began to use paddles to stamp designs on the outer surfaces of their pots. Paddle stamping was their way of getting better heat distribution for cooking and offering a more secure hand grip for carrying and serving. The designs on the paddles added elements of the spiritual to everyday utilitarian objects.
The Cherokee continued developing and refining their pottery tradition until they hit a life-changing roadblock when the US Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1832 and President Andrew Jackson signed it into law. The remainder of the 1830s saw most of the tribe rounded up by the military, relieved of everything they couldn't carry, and then relieved of most of what they could carry, too. Then they were forced to negotiate the eight-hundred-mile gauntlet of the Trail of Tears led by incredibly incompetent government appointees. At least 1 in 10 of their people died on that trek. They were relocated to eastern Oklahoma on land nothing like what they had always known. Many of their ancient traditions fell by the wayside there as everyone's lives became focused on basic survival.
Things went pretty much downhill for them for the next 100 years, then in the 1930s the Bureau of Indian Affairs slowly started to turn around and do the job it was meant to do. Slowly help started coming to the tribes. Most Native American tribes began to revive some of their traditional ways in the 1930s, with ever larger waves of revival coming about every ten years after. The Cherokee were no different for that.
Today, there are three federally-recognized Cherokee tribes: the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians (UKB), the Cherokee Nation and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The UKB and the Cherokee Nation are headquartered in Tahlequah, OK while the Eastern Band is headquartered in Cherokee, NC.
The UKB are descendants of Cherokees who'd seen what was coming and decided to head west on their own in the early 1800s. Most of them moved to northwestern Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma before Jackson was elected President. Fort Smith was built to keep them (and others) in line after the Indian Removal Act was passed.
The Cherokee Nation is composed of descendants of those who made the journey to Indian Territory over the Trail of Tears.
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is composed of descendants of those who never left the Appalachians. In order to legally stay, their ancestors had to become subjects of the US government, attend Christian churches and drop all their native traditions and claims to anything. They also had to buy the land they lived on. Many who stayed were swindled out of everything in the local county courthouse anyway and forced to make the journey west on their own. The few who were able to adapt to the new environment and stay, got together over the years and bought essentially all the 56,000 acres of the Qualla Boundary. Unlike a reservation where the land was given to the tribe by the government, Qualla is owned outright by the people and held in trust for them by the government.
For more info:
About the Cherokee at Wikipedia