Cherokee Nation Trivia
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47 free Cherokee Nation trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
The Cherokee Nation is the largest of the three federally recognised Cherokee tribes and one of the largest tribal nations in the United States, headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, with a reservation across 14 counties. This quiz covers its whole story: the matrilineal clans of the Southeastern homeland, Sequoyah's syllabary and the Cherokee Phoenix, the gold rush and the Indian Removal Act, the Supreme Court cases and the Treaty of New Echota, the Trail of Tears, John Ross's long chieftaincy, the Civil War and Stand Watie, allotment and near-dissolution, the rebuilding under Wilma Mankiller, the Freedmen citizenship fight and the 2020s court decisions that affirmed the reservation. Easy questions ask where the capital is and who created the writing system; harder ones cover the Cherokee word for the tribe, the 1997 courthouse crisis and how many characters the syllabary has. It suits students of American history, Cherokee citizens and their families, Oklahoma trivia nights and anyone who wants the real story behind a name most Americans know. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the Cherokee Nation, its history and its leading figures, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which institution of higher education has its main campus in Tahlequah, the Cherokee capital?
Northeastern State
Northeastern State grew out of the Cherokee Female Seminary: after statehood, Oklahoma bought the tribe's school building in 1909 to train teachers.
Q 02Which US state is home to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians?
North Carolina
North Carolina is home to the Eastern Band, whose ancestors stayed behind, some hiding in the mountains, when most Cherokee were driven west in 1838.
Q 03Which Oklahoma city lies partly inside the Cherokee Nation's reservation?
Tulsa
Tulsa lies partly inside the reservation, and after courts affirmed it in 2021 the tribe's own court took on hundreds of criminal cases the state once handled.
Q 04Which 2020 Supreme Court ruling on the Muscogee led courts to affirm the Cherokee reservation was never disestablished?
McGirt v. Oklahoma
McGirt v. Oklahoma first led state courts to vacate old convictions, but in 2021 Oklahoma's top criminal court refused to apply it to convictions already final.
Q 05The Cherokee Nation's newspaper, the first published by Native Americans in the US, is named after which mythical bird?
The phoenix
The phoenix named a weekly printed in English and Cherokee, and it stopped in 1834 when the US government failed to pay the tribe's annuity.
Q 06Who was the first person to learn Sequoyah's Cherokee syllabary?
His young daughter
His young daughter learned it first and helped him prove it to Cherokee leaders; within a few years most Cherokee could read and write in the new script.
Q 07Which humorist, born a citizen of the Cherokee Nation in 1879, died in a 1935 plane crash in Alaska?
Will Rogers
Will Rogers first found fame with a rope-twirling act that led to the Ziegfeld Follies, long before his fatal flight with aviator Wiley Post.
Q 08What did Indian Territory's leaders propose at the 1905 Sequoyah Convention?
A separate state
A separate state, to be called Sequoyah, won a territorial vote in 1905, but Congress refused to act, and Indian Territory joined Oklahoma as one state in 1907.
Q 09To which country did Sequoyah travel late in life seeking Cherokees who had migrated there?
Mexico
Mexico is where Sequoyah died on that search, by most accounts in 1843, and he never returned to Indian Territory.
Q 10The Cherokee language belongs to which language family?
Iroquoian
Iroquoian links Cherokee to northern languages, and an old Cherokee migration story tells of the people journeying south from the far north.
Q 11After the Cherokee adopted a written constitution in 1827, what did Georgia's legislature do?
Declared Cherokee laws void
Declared Cherokee laws void: Georgia extended its own laws over Cherokee land, and later handed that land out to white Georgians by lottery.
Q 12Which clan did a Cherokee man's child by a white woman traditionally belong to?
No clan at all
No clan at all: clan membership came through the mother, so such children were born outside the clans, and only an 1825 law made them part of the tribe.
Q 13Nanyehi, known in English as Nancy Ward, held which honoured title among the 18th-century Cherokee?
Beloved Woman
Q 21Which Treaty Party leader and newspaper editor was killed in 1839 for signing away tribal land?
Elias Boudinot
Elias Boudinot had edited the nation's newspaper until 1832, when his pro-removal views cost him the job three years before he signed the treaty.
Q 22Major Ridge was assassinated in 1839 by members of which group?
The Ross faction
The Ross faction men who killed him held that giving up communal land was a capital crime, and Major Ridge had signed away the homeland in 1835.
Q 23In 2022, the US Mint honoured former Cherokee Nation chief Wilma Mankiller on which coin?
The quarter
The quarter honours a chief whose family was moved from Oklahoma to California under a federal relocation program when she was a girl.
Beloved Woman was the title she won at the Battle of Taliwa by taking her fatally wounded husband's place in the fight, and it gave her a voice on the council of chiefs.
Q 14The Cherokee capital New Echota, used until removal, was named in honour of what?
Chota, an old Overhill settlement
Chota, an old Overhill settlement once seen as the Cherokee capital, gave New Echota its name, and New Echota in turn named the 1835 treaty that ceded the homeland.
Q 15The discovery of what near Dahlonega in the late 1820s drew thousands of prospectors onto Cherokee land in Georgia?
Gold
Gold drew so many miners that the rush was called the Great Intrusion even at the time, and it increased the pressure to remove the Cherokee.
Q 16Which US president signed the Indian Removal Act into law on 28 May 1830?
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson had fought alongside Cherokee warriors against the Red Sticks in 1813-14, yet as president he made removing eastern tribes a national objective.
Q 17What phrase did Chief Justice Marshall use for the Cherokee polity in the 1831 case against Georgia?
Domestic dependent nation
Domestic dependent nation was Marshall's label, and because the Cherokee Nation was not a 'foreign state', the court said it could not bring its case against Georgia there.
Q 18In 1832 the Supreme Court vacated missionary Samuel Worcester's conviction for what?
Living on Cherokee land without a state licence
Living on Cherokee land without a state licence earned Worcester four years of hard labour, and Georgia ignored the Supreme Court until he accepted a pardon in 1833.
Q 19In 1893, how was the Cherokee Outlet, land the US had bought from the Cherokee Nation, opened to settlers?
By a land run
By a land run: settlers raced across the Outlet to stake claims, yet most of those who took part never secured one.
Q 20Which US general commanded the 1838 roundup of Cherokee people for removal to Indian Territory?
Winfield Scott
Winfield Scott told his troops to show 'every possible kindness', yet the roundup into stockades proved harrowing, and an estimated 4,000 Cherokee died during removal.
Q 24The National Holiday, held each Labor Day weekend, celebrates the signing of what on 6 September 1839?
The reunited tribe's founding charter
The reunited tribe's founding charter was its 1839 constitution, binding Cherokees who had moved west years earlier to those driven out on the Trail of Tears.
Q 25Stand Watie, a Cherokee brigadier, holds what distinction from the American Civil War?
Last Confederate general to surrender
Last Confederate general to surrender, Stand Watie gave up on 23 June 1865, a year after his cavalry captured a Union steamboat.
Q 26The 1866 treaty with the US required the Cherokee Nation to grant its freedmen what?
Tribal citizenship
Tribal citizenship, with all the rights of native Cherokees, went to freedmen, and the same treaty let the US settle other tribes on Cherokee land.
Q 27Which 1898 law extended allotment to the Five Tribes and broke up their governments before Oklahoma statehood?
The Curtis Act
The Curtis Act, which ended tribal courts, was written by Charles Curtis, a Kansas congressman of Kaw descent who later became US vice president.
Q 28From 1919 the US appointed Cherokee chiefs for terms so brief the practice earned what nickname?
Chief for a Day
Chief for a Day fit the brief federal appointees, but one of them, J. B. Milam, appointed in 1941, served until his death in 1949 and set out to rebuild the tribal government.
Q 29William Wayne Keeler, chief of the Cherokee Nation, was also president of which oil company?
Phillips Petroleum
Phillips Petroleum's future chief executive was first appointed chief by President Truman in 1949, then in 1971 became the tribe's first elected chief in decades.
Q 30Wilma Mankiller, first woman Principal Chief of the Cherokee, was later awarded which national honour?
The Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom came in 1998; she had first become principal chief in 1985, when her predecessor left to run the Bureau of Indian Affairs.