cherokee
n. countablen. a member of a Native American people who originally lived in the Southeastern United States. You use this word to refer to the people or their language.
n. a member of a Native American people historically located in the Southeastern United States, now primarily in Oklahoma. Also refers to their Iroquoian language.
The Cherokee tribe has a rich cultural history.
She learned to speak Cherokee from her grandmother during summer visits to Oklahoma.
The forced removal of the Cherokee people, known as the Trail of Tears, remains a pivotal and tragic chapter in American history.
Most likely from the Cherokee autonym ᏣᎳᎩ (tsalagi). Derivation from a Choctaw exonym meaning "those who live in caves" (compare chiluk (“cave”)) has also been suggested — the Iroquois term for the Cherokee was Oyata'ge'ronon (“inhabitants of the cave country”) — as has derivation from a Creek term for "person(s) who speak(s) a non-Creek language" (see celokketv (“to speak a non-creek language”)). Whatever its origin, the ethnonym entered European languages at an early date, perhaps as early as the 1670s; in Spanish, the people are called the Tchalaquei as early as 1755.