How Did Culture Change Throughout The Cherokee Culture

The Cherokee culture has changed dramatically from their pre-European contact to present day. Over that time, they overcame many challenges and tragedies but resulted in a strong and prosperous community and had made them one of the most well-known and admired Native American tribes of today.

Prior to European contact The Cherokee nation was a vast, covering most of the south-eastern region of what is now known as the United States from West Virginia, down the coast to North Carolina and South Carolina and throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. Unlike their nomadic cousins in the western plains, the Cherokee lived in permanent villages primarily along rivers which provided the rivercane and plaster used to make their homes
Wisely the Cherokee avoided them, but little did they know that this was just the beginning (Bryan, 2012). It was almost 20 years later when the Spanish finally retuned and right behind them the French. By the Establishment of the first English colony, Jamestown, in 1607 a sizable percentage of native Americans had already begun to die due to foreign diseases. The colonists brought more than just disease, they brought livestock, tools, horses, cloth, livestock and guns, all of which would change the fundamental culture of the Cherokee over the next hundred years (Bryan, 2012). /By 1670’s it is estimated that all tribes in the south east had acquired guns. The acquisition of firearms and the introduction to the fur trade were the catalyst that began the change of the Cherokee people into a market society (Conley, 2002). The of guns, horses and livestock allowed hunters the time and with increased ease at which to acquire more furs (“Cherokee”, 2005). By the 1700s the Cherokee way of live revolved around the fur trade and largely it “commercialized the society of the Cherokees” (Bryan, 2012). Because their focus was now on hunting and trading many traditional skills for making items started to fade(Conley, 2002). In 1715 the Cherokee, although still made up of many towns, decided that one person would be designated to represent them in their dealings with the English. This is believed to be the first step the Cherokee took toward a centralized government (Conley, 2002). It was only 15 years later that the Cherokee nation made a formal agreement with King George that not only cemented their trade relations but also prevented the Cherokee from allying with the French (Rozema, 2002). Unfortunately, in 1738 disaster struck the Cherokee., an smallpox epidemic wiped out a large portion of the