The proper name we Cherokees call ourselves is Yun-wiya, meaning the “principal people” or the “real people. Cherokee, the name we are known by, has no meaning in our language. It is believed that the word came from the Choctaw word “choluk or chiluk”, meaning cave and that when the Spanish explorers ask what our tribe’s name was, what the Spanish heard was Cherokee. The Choctaw called our nation the “Cave Dwellers” beacause we lived in caves.
The Cherokee Country use to be the terriory now known as the states Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia until our forced removeal, known as the Tear of Tears in 1838, to Oklahoma.
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