Cherokee Homeland

Cherokee Homeland. Blue Ridge Parkway. From here you can see the Qualla Boundary, the 56,000-acre home of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. It borders Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Blue Ridge Parkway., The Cherokee originally held over 140,000 square miles in parts of eight states. By the 1820s they held only a small territory. In the 1830s most Cherokees were forced to Oklahoma over what became the Trail of Tears., Forty-nine Cherokee households signed an 1819 treaty to stay in their ancestral homes as "Citizen Cherokees." With those who resisted removal they became the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. They later bought back some lands, and in 1889 the US government reserved the Qualla Boundary for them. The seat of Tribal government , executive, legislative, and judicial , is in Cherokee, North Carolina., "To me, this region is the top of the whole world , the land of the Sky People. The skyline is in all directions and close at hand. It is a land of cold rushing rivers, small creeks, deep gorges, dark timber, and waterfalls. Great billowing clouds sail upon the mountains and in early morning a blue-gray mist hangs just above the treetops." , Cherokee traditional story