1777, July 20: Articles of a Treaty of Peace between North Carolina and the Chiefs of that part of the Cherokee Nation called the Overhill Indians of the other part.
There is no singular "Cherokee Nation" and this is proof. This is not a divide in the Nation, there never was a single, unified nation because the groups involved were only tied together through linguistics. They are NOT ethnically, culturally, socially, or religiously a single group of people. They are different people groups and they were never one body politic. The Overhill Cherokee, those who make up the modern Cherokee Nation, are the "du Chat Nation," the long tail cat nation from the Lake Erie and Lake Huron area who migrated to the Southeast Woodlands in the mid-1670s according to the Jesuit Relations documents of the Catholic Church and the letters of Chief Charles Hicks to John Ross.
Make no mistake, the slave traders of the 1700s called the Overhill Cherokee are the same people who deny rights to the Cherokee Freedmen today. Some would call this Racism and Bigotry.
(C) This document was produced at the request of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on July 18, 2019, to document the History, Anthropology, Culture, Religion, and Archaeology of The Chickamauga Nation.