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 Though it is one of the healthier Indian languages of North America and the one in which the most literature being published, Tsalagi is still in imperiled condition because of government policies as late as the fifties which enforced the removal of Cherokee children from Tsalagi-speaking homes, reducing the number of young Cherokees being raised bilingually from 75% to less than 5% today.
 
 Cherokee is Creek for people with another language.  It's really amazing how white settlers always managed to learn some other tribe's name for any group of Indians.  They learned the Creek word for Cherokee, but not the Creek word for themselves.

The original name for the Cherokee was Aniyunwiya, but Cherokee is the name we call them to day. Though we say it Tsalagi--there's no R in the Cherokee language. 

 
The best-known episode in Cherokee history was also the worst: the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation of the Cherokee people from their ancestral home in the southeast to Oklahoma. 

The Cherokee has long been known for their artistic abilities.  Their hand thrown pottery designs are unique and truly beautiful.

 The Cherokee had been one of the most acculturated of Indian societies-an urban, Christian, agricultural,  largely intermarried people who supported the United States against other tribes. In the end this was all for nothing. 

Though some prominent Americans, such as Davy Crockett and Daniel Webster, spoke against Removal, and though the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional,  President Andrew Jackson, declaring "Justice Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it," sent in the army.   

Fifteen to twenty thousand Cherokee and their Indian neighbors Choctaw, Muskogee, and others were rounded up and herded to Oklahoma in the winter of 1838-1839.

The once prosperous and largely very well equipped Cherokees were brutally  driven from their homes without being allowed to collect their possessions, not even their shoes,  which explains why between four and eight thousand Cherokee people died of exposure, starvation, disease, and simple exhaustion along the Trail of Tears.

On the Cherokee Reservation at Cherokee NC an outdoor stage drama, Unto These Hills,  tells the heartbreaking story of their Trail Of Tears.  This reservation is also home to some of the nations largest casinos.  Drawing crowds of people from all over during the summer months  the quiet, sleepy little town of Cherokee turns into a mecca for the avid casino fans. 

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