In the Revolution they took sides against the Americans, and continued the struggle almost without interval until 1794. In 1759, under the leadership of A ´ganst â´ta (Oconostota), they began war with the English of Carolina. In 1736 the Jesuit (?) Priber started the first mission among them, and attempted to organize their government on a civilized basis. Their relations with the Carolina colonies began 150 years later. Traditional, linguistic, and archeological evidence shows that the Cherokee originated in the north, but they were found in possession of the south Allegheny region when first encountered by De Soto in 1540. The upper dialect is that which has been exclusively used in the native literature of the tribe. The lower dialect was the only one which had the r sound, and is now extinct. A´tăli, Mountain or Upper, spoken throughout most of upper Georgia, east Tennessee, and extreme western North Carolina.Middle, spoken chiefly on the waters of Tuckasegee River, in western North Carolina, and now the prevailing dialect on the East Cherokee reservation.Elatĭ, or Lower, spoken on the heads of Savannah River, in South Carolina and Georgia.The language has three principal dialects: Their northern kinsmen, the Iroquois, called them Oyata’ge‘ronoñ, ‘inhabitants of the cave country’ (Hewitt), and the Delawares and connected tribes called them Kittuwa, from the settlement already noted.They seem to be identical with the Rickohockans, who invaded central Virginia in 1658, and with the ancient Talligewi, of Delaware tradition, who were represented to have been driven southward from the upper Ohio River region by the combined forces of the Iroquois and Delawares. They sometimes also called themselves Ani´-Yûñ´-wiyá, ‘real people,’ or Ani´-Kĭtu´hwagĭ, ‘people of Kituhwa,’ one of their most important ancient settlements. The Cherokee have long held that their tribal name is a corruption of Tsálăgĭ or Tsărăgĭ, the name by which they commonly called themselves, and which may be derived from the Choctaw chiluk-ki ‘cave people’, in allusion to the numerous caves in their mountain country. A powerful detached tribe of the Iroquoian family, formerly holding the whole mountain region of the south Alleghenies, in southwest Virginia, western North Carolina and South Carolina, north Georgia, east Tennessee, and northeast Alabama, and claiming even to the Ohio River.
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