United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians
The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma is a federally recognized tribe of Cherokee Native Americans headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. According to the UKB website, its members are mostly descendants of "Old Settlers" or "Western Cherokees," those Cherokees who migrated from the Southeast to present-day Arkansas and Oklahoma around 1817. Some reports estimate that Old Settlers began migrating west by 1800, before the forced relocation of Cherokees by the United States in the late 1830s under the Indian Removal Act.
Seal of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians
UKB Tribal Complex, West Willis Road, Tahlequah
Virginia Stroud, enrolled UKB member, accepts an award for her artwork, Cherokee Heritage Center, Park Hill, Oklahoma, 2007
UKB Jim Proctor Elder Community Center, Tahlequah
The Cherokee people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, edges of western South Carolina, northern Georgia and northeastern Alabama consisting of around 40,000 square miles
Sequoyah, creator of the Cherokee syllabary as painted by Henry Inman circa 1830
Great Smoky Mountains
After the Anglo-Cherokee War, bitterness remained between the two groups. In 1765, Henry Timberlake took three Cherokee chiefs to London meet the Crown and help strengthen the newly declared peace.
Portrait of Major Ridge in 1834, from History of the Indian Tribes of North America.