Who Were the Cherokees? :

Which one of these men was a Native American? Both of them were. The man on the left was a Cherokee Nation chief, and the man on the right was a Fox Nation Chief.

The Cherokees lived in their own nation in the southeastern United States, mostly in what is now Georgia, North and South Carolina, and eastern Tennessee. Of all the Native American groups living in the Southeast in the early 1800s, the Cherokees were the most successful at assimilating—adopting parts of another culture different from their own. Because of this, the Cherokees were known as one of the “civilized tribes” who had taken on American ways.

In this lesson, you will learn about how the Cherokees assimilated parts of the culture of the white American South and whether this helped them to keep their land.