202 BUREAU OP AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 118 



various times east of the Mississippi Kiver", presents the Cherokee 

 area as including the northeast corner of Alabama, northern Georgia, 

 the western portion of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Vir- 

 ginia, and a small part of the extreme southern part of West Vir- 

 ginia. From the corner of Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia, 

 the northwestern boundary of this area follows the direction of the 

 Kentucky- Virginia boundary line and crosses the State of Tennessee 

 to a point on the northern boundary of Alabama midway from east 

 to west. This area included the valleys of the Powell and Clinch 

 Rivers for their entire lengths. The evidence for this boundary as 

 the land "held" by the Cherokee came from many sources — ethno- 

 logical, archaeological, historical, and traditional. The map as thus 

 drawn is an attempt by Mooney to combine all available information 

 as to the area occupied or claimed by the Cherokee in prehistoric 

 times. 



After the beginning of the colonial period in America the pres- 

 sure of the white population, at first on the Atlantic seaboard and 

 later along the Gulf coast, began a long period of unsettlement for 

 the native populations. Before white settlement there had been little 

 need for the assertion of fixed boundaries for the Indian populations. 

 With the rising pressure of population and the consequent shifting 

 of many Indian tribes in all directions, the matter of boundaries 

 became very important, and many Indian nations laid claim to vast 

 domains as "hunting grounds", even though such areas had never 

 in any sense been occupied by them. Mooney thus describes the 

 situation of the Cherokee : 



The Cherokee were the mountaineers of the South, holding the entire Alle- 

 gheny region from the interlocking head-streams of the Kanawha and the Ten- 

 nessee southward almost to the site of Atlanta, and from the Blue ridge on the 

 east to the Cumberland range on the west, a territory comprising an area of 

 about 40,000 square miles, now included in the states of Virginia, Tennessee, 

 North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. Their principal towns 

 were upon the headwaters of the Savannah, Hiwassee, and Tuckasegee, and 

 along the whole length of the Little Tennessee to its junction with the main 

 stream. Itsati, or Echota, on the south bank of the Little Tennessee, a few 

 miles above the mouth of Tellico river, in Tennessee, was commonly considered 

 the capital of the Nation. As the advancing whites pressed upon them from the 

 east and northeast, the more exposed towns were destroyed or abandoned and 

 new settlements were formed lower down the Tennessee and on the upper 

 branches of the Chattahoochee and the Coosa. 



As is always the case with tribal geography, there were no fixed boundaries, 

 and on every side the Cherokee frontiers were contested by rival claimants. 

 In Virginia, there is reason to believe, the tribe was held in check in early days 

 by the Powhatan and the Monacan. On the east and southeast the Tuscarora 

 and Catawba were their inveterate enemies, with hardly even a momentary truce 

 within the historic period ; and evidence goes to show that the Sara or Cheraw 

 were fully as hostile. On the south there was hereditary war with the Creeks, 

 who claimed nearly the whole of upper Georgia as theirs by original possession, 



