What's In a Name?

One of the major arguments against removing the Cherokee from their homelands in 1835 was that they had adopted many of the trappings of white, frontier civilization. They farmed, lived in houses, published a newspaper in their own language, and some even owned slaves. The Treaty of New Echota required that a census of the Cherokee be taken as a means of establishing the value of the Cherokee land and property so that reparations could be made. You can use the information in this census to gain a better sense of the everyday life of the Cherokee than that provided in many primary descriptions. We'll start by looking at what's in a name as you learn how to work with the data in the file.

Open your GIS software and the Cherokee project file. Make sure that just the following layers are open. Close others to avoid confusion:

Census
Tanner Map - 1835
My World
ArcGIS
• Click on the Visualize tab.

• Select Tanner Map from the table of contents.

• Click the box next to the title of each layer in the table of contents you want opened (); off to close.

• Select Tanner Map from the Map View menu to zoom in on this layer.

 • Select Tanner Map from the Bookmarks menu.

• Check the box next to the title of each layer in the table of contents you want to make visible; uncheck to hide.

• Select Tanner Map from the Bookmarks menu to zoom in on this layer.


The map you have opened is from an Atlas of the United States prepared by H.S. Tanner in 1835, the same year the Cherokee census was taken. Data from the census is overlaid on top of the map. Select the Census layer and use the information tool to pick one of the locations in red on the map. A window similar to the one below will open that lists the information about the Cherokee household(s) at that particular location. Note that there may be more than one household at each location. Click on other locations and you will see the information change.

Open the data table for the Census layer.

My World
ArcGIS
• Select the Census layer in the table of contents.

• Click on the table button ( )

 • Right click on the Census layer in the table of contents.

• Click Open Attribute Table

What you have is a random sample from the 1835 census that represents approximately 10% of the total. Move the slider at the bottom of the table and examine the categories of information that were included. A table in the Cherokee Census worksheet gives a detailed description of each category of data. Please understand that the locations of the Cherokee households on the map are approximate - most often to the creek indicated in the census document.

You can use the graphing and statistics tools that are available in your software to explore the data in the census. For example, we can look at the extent to which the Cherokee owned farms through a graph and statistics like those below:

My World
ArcGIS
• Select the Census layer in the table of contents.

• Click on the graph button ( )

• Select FARMS from the drop down menu:

• Use the slider to adjust the number of bins (bars) to 13.

 • Right click on the Census layer in the table of contents and Open Attributes Table.

• Right click on the FARMS heading and select Statistics...

From the graph and from the mode of the data we can see that the typical Cherokee household consisted of one farm. There were exceptions - one family owning 13 farms - but they were well outside the norm.

To Start You Thinking -

1) Names were often given in honor of personal accomplishments or existing character traits or traits that were valued. Study the translated Cherokee names in the census. In general, what do they say about the individuals and culture of the people who gave them? Do you find any exceptions?

2) Examine the location of Cherokee home sites in the map carefully. What common geographic feature do most share?

3) Use the measurement tool and determine how far it is from the census location near Blountsville, Alabama to the most extreme eastern Cherokee household on the map.

My World
ArcGIS
• Click on the measurement tool ( ).

• Click the tool on Blountsville and then double click on the census location in North Carolina.

• Click on the measurement tool ( ).

• Click the tool on Blountsville and then double click on the census location in North Carolina.

4) As mentioned, the sample you are working with is about 10% of the total. Approximately how many Cherokee were counted in the complete census?

5) As the census suggests, some Cherokee owned slaves. What was the modal (the most commonly occurring) number of slaves owned by Cherokee families?

6) What does the data in the census tell you about the Cherokee as farmers? Use statistics from the file to support your observations.

image from National Archives, Census Roll, 1835, of Cherokee Indians East of the Mississippi. NA#T496 imposed on a portion of a map from H.S. Tanner, Atlas of the United States part of The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.

Last modified in July, 2008 by Rick Thomas