Can someone please describe the historic Cherokee indian tribe's environment?

Question

First detailed and useful answer with be voted best.

Answer 1

Allow me to recommend a book for you.......
MANKILLER - A Chief & Her People
By: Wilma Mankiller & Michael Wallis
St. Martin's Press

An Autobiography by the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation

Answer 2

I love Indian culture so I hope I can help. The Cherokee was located on the plains in states like Oklahoma. They killed buffaloe for food, shelter, and warm clothes. The Cherokee slept in teepees but ate, cooked, and worked outdoors. They kept their communities small (like packs) and built them in well protected areas near water ways and near their source of food: buffalo, rabbits, fish, and deer. They were not known as fisherman but did catch fish on occasion when other meat was scarce. They were peaceful but did protect their clan from other indians and later the white man. Being peaceful they learned to live along side white men. They also ate seeds, nuts and berries. The women kept the village while the men hunted. The reason they lived on the prairrie is that is where the buffalo lived and they stayed near them for their lively hood. They would even move the village each winter to follow the buffalo. The central part of the US was there grounds.

I have known many modern day Cherokee and they are lovely people. My sister in law and her family is Cherokee but I have know many more mixed Cherokees. They are a nice people with a nice personality.

Answer 3

Environment as in the actual place where they lived? Or social environment? If you're looking for where in the current U.S. they lived, they were in and around North Carolina, and in addition had a secluded settlement in the Great Smoky Mountains of N.C and Tennessee where they still live to this day. (I'm not sure if the hidden settlement was founded before, or because of, the Trail of Tears.)

Socially, they were quite "civilized" in comparison to other tribes. They were farmers, had an alphabet, a written language, (they used the printing press a lot), and if I'm remembering my history correctly, were on the verge of setting up a semi-communistic society when "Manifest Destiny" and the US Army arrived in force and evicted most of the population. The people who made it to the hidden settlement in the Great Smoky Mountatins are the ancestors of the Cherokee who live there today.

Hope that helps some.

Answer 4

oral history says that the cherokee split from the iroquoise perhaps a thousand years ago and came into the southeast woodlands and the southern appalachian mountains, which is where europeans first encountered them.

the type of woodlands where they lived (and some still live) are generally temperate, deciduous hardwood forests.

they lived in large villages and did not roam as tribes in other environments did (such as the tribes of the plains and plateau). their houses were dome shaped, partially underground, and made of saplings and mud daub. they had larger "longhouses" for community gatherings, often built on the mounds of the earlier missippian culture.

they survived by a combination of farming, hunting and gathering wild plant foods. they crops they grew included beans, squash, sunflowers, and corn.

the cherokee have been scattered all over north america and a large group of them were force-marched in the wintertime in the 1830's to oklahoma by the federal government (where my ancesters ended up).

the oklahoma cherokee, in particular, adapted to their new environment by adopting some of the hunting customs of other native americans such as bison hunting on the plains. plains bison (buffalo) were not present in the southern woodlands they came from.

originally the cherokee called themselves "aniyunweya" (principle people). the name cherokee comes from another tribe's name for them, although many modern cherokee call themselves "tsalagi" or "jalagi".

traditionally, women were honored and had an important place in the tribe's government. lineage was determined by the mother's clan and women controlled village life and child rearing.

Answer 5

Unspoiled wilderness as the Indian made little impact on the land.

Answer 6

Lots of tee-pees and trees and little ones running around.....sorry, the best I can do!