I hear that Charles Frazier (Cold Mountain author) is now writing about Cherokees during Civil War times.
Haven't seen that movie yet--can't get past the fact that it was filmed in Romania.
Even a cursory look at Cherokee history ought to remind readers that the tribe was rather like an Indian Roman Empire--it conquered and absorbed many other minor tribes, Creek and Catawba, Lumbee and even some Seminole and many others. They generally just enforced a tribal "assimilation" on their conquests, but the unassimilated would not survive.
Called "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" if whites do it.
Goes to show that a human being is always a human being, no matter what romance is attached to the ethnicity.
Most of the intensely southern, rural mountainous decendents are strongly Cherokee in blood--the ones with the rebel flags on pickup trucks.
Also the Southern and Midwest accents are heavily influenced by the indian tribes in their regions. The plains indians spoke in an almost monotone voice the accent seen in movies, the Cherokee and Eastern tribes accent were almost musical.