Land area
Reservation of the Cherokee, Eastern band in North Carolina (area 580)
- 1875
Set aside as a reservation
The 1899 record: “Funds appropriated by act July 29, 1848, to be expended in perfecting Cherokees' title to their lands in North Carolina”
In the record
Secured for the Eastern Band of Cherokee under an 1875 act: the Qualla boundary and some small tracts in North Carolina, with funds used to complete their title. Not a cession. The area covers about 75 thousand acres in what is now North Carolina.
The 1899 record names Cherokee as the people of this land.
This area was not ceded. The 1899 record shows it as a reservation the nation kept, at least until the record ends in 1894.
Today, Cherokee Nation, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians carry the history of the people named here.
Written from the records linked here; open any of them for its sources.
Shapes come from C. C. Royce’s 1899 maps as georeferenced by the US Forest Service. They are approximate and are not legal descriptions of land. Royce recorded land the United States treated as ceded; the shape does not show a nation’s territory.
Who is doing the work
This history belongs to living nations. Start with them:
Native legal and land defense, nationally
- Native American Rights Fund (NARF) Native-led Litigation and legal advocacy for tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, land and resources Give on their site Website
- NDN Collective (LANDBACK Campaign) Native-led LANDBACK campaign (launched 2020; Mount Rushmore closure and return of Black Hills public lands), Indigenous… Give on their site Website
- Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF) Native-led Land recovery and control by tribes and individual Indian landowners Website
- Decolonizing Wealth Project (Indigenous Earth Fund; California Tribal Land Return) Native-led Reparative philanthropy Give on their site Website
Gifts go straight to each organization; this atlas takes nothing. Listing is not endorsement: how organizations are listed.
Connections
Links marked “suggested” were matched automatically by name or date and have not yet been reviewed by a person.
Nations named for this land 2
- Cherokeeas named in the 1899 recordsuggested
- Eastern Band of Cherokee Indiansmatched by the Forest Service, under reviewsuggested
Located in 1
Sources
The record’s fields
- Area number in the 1899 record
- 580
- Dates in the 1899 record
- 1875-03-03
- Kind of instrument
- Act of Congress
- Peoples as named in the 1899 record
- Cherokee, Eastern band
- States
- NC
- Counties
- Buncombe; Madison
- Map sheets in the 1899 record
- North Carolina
- Geometry
- Approximate shape from Royce’s 1899 maps
Research notes
geometry_role is 'cession' for every USFS feature: no field in the source distinguishes cessions from reservations.
- Kind
- Land area
- Confidence
- Medium