515
sobs quietly
(s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com)
late edit: DISCLAIMER: The pictured map is not actually a representation of the territories before colonisation. It's a hypothetical map of what countries there might have been had the continent not been colonised, thus all the names and borders are fictional and have never existed.
For good actual maps, check out native-land.ca.
Hah, that's wild. My dad has an incredible amount of genealogy research (he's the kind that will go to city halls in bumfuck middle of nowhere) and the instance of Cherokee in our family traces back to late 1800s. I believe it would be my great, great, great grandmother. Her family were survivors of the 1830-1850 genocide (aka the trail of tears), and she was born a while after in Oaklahoma. Her information was recorded because she married a Christian man, under pressure from her parents according to letters found. My grandmother is a member of the tribe in Oaklahoma, for all the good that it does as she never actually did anything with them.