Cherokee Adaptation to the Landscape of the West and Overcoming the Loss of Culturally Significant Plants

Abstract

Prior to 1721, Cherokees inhabited a vast expanse of land that is estimated to have encompassed 135,000 square miles covering an area that now includes portions of North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. This territory stretched nearly from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River, providing an almost complete cross section through the eastern temperate forest of North America. Traversing this land from east to west, one would move through ten distinct ecoregions, including the Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain, Southeastern Plains, Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Ridge and Valley, Central Appalachians, Western Allegheny Plateau, Southwestern Appalachians, Interior Plateau, and Interior River Valley and Hills (Commission for Environmental Cooperation 2006). Each of these ecoregions displays distinct landforms, soils, vegetation, and climatic infl uence, and, taken together, they are a rich and abundant temperate landscape characterized by a diversity of broadleaf deciduous trees and needle-leaf conifers (Commission for Environmental Cooperation 1997). Fertile soils and plentiful wildlife provided for the Cherokees, and villages were located throughout the southern half of this territory. The Southern Appalachian Mountains are considered one of the most botanically diverse temperate ecoregions in the world. These mountains were formed roughly 425 million years ago and have remained relatively stable over the last 200 million years, allowing for the evolution of tremendous biodiversity, including over 130 species of trees, 1,500 species