Cherokee Nation
A nation today
Background
The Nation's own history dates the first known European contact to Hernando de Soto in 1540, and says that at that time the Nation held land across much or most of what is now West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, led by a principal chief elected by the chiefs of the towns within its domain. The Cherokee adopted a written constitution in 1827, and after the 1835 Treaty of New Echota and the removal of 1838 the Nation reassembled under a new constitution in 1839 and set up government buildings, schools, businesses and homes at Tahlequah, where it started the Cherokee Advocate newspaper in 1844 in English and in Cherokee. The Nation's history puts the dead of the removal at about 4,000 people, roughly one quarter of the population, killed in the camps or on the trail. The Principal Chiefs Act of 1970 brought popular election of the principal chiefs of the Five Tribes, a 1976 constitution superseded the 1839 one, and the current constitution dates from 2003. The Nation's Language Department counts an estimated 2,000 first-language speakers and says the Durbin Feeling Language Preservation Act, announced in September 2019, brought the largest investment into language programs in the Nation's history.
Visit and learn
Cherokee Arts Center
A working studio and gallery in historic downtown Tahlequah, in a building first put up as a Works Progress Administration project during the Great Depression and later restored with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money and tribal funds. The studios cover metalsmithing, pottery, loom weaving and painting, and the Spider Gallery next door lets Cherokee artists show and sell work. The Tribe's site lists business hours as 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Saturday.
Tribal lands have their own laws. Check the nation's site before you visit.
Parks on its homelands
Mammoth Cave National ParkThe Cherokee Nation's own history says the Nation held land in 1540 across much or most of modern Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama, and it is based at Tahlequah, Oklahoma today. Source
Programs
Cherokee Nation Language Department
The department runs a translation office, community and online language classes, the Cherokee Language Master Apprentice Program, the Cherokee Immersion School and its own language technology, including the Cherokee syllabary installed on computers and phones. It classes the language as a Class IV language in the difficulty of its spoken form and says the syllabary is its written form rather than an alphabet. The department's phone number is 918-207-4900 and its address is language@cherokee.org.
Cherokee Nation Natural Resources Department
Seven units sit under the department of the same name: Environmental Programs, an Ethnobiology Department, Land Management and Agriculture, a Sanitary Landfill, a Tribal Historic Preservation Office, a Wildfire Prevention Program and Wildlife Conservation. The department reports that an executive director oversees eleven sub-departments and about 100 employees.
Sources
- https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-01-30/html/2026-01899.htm
- https://www.cherokee.gov/about-the-nation/history/
- https://language.cherokee.gov/
Checked September 2026.