Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Cherokee people, known to themselves as Aniyunwiya, the principal people, have inhabited the Southern Appalachian region for thousands of years. Their ancestral homeland covered approximately 40,000 square miles and included parts of southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, and parts of western South Carolina, northern Georgia, and northeastern Alabama.
Sequoyah introduced the Cherokee syllabary, the first written syllabic form of an American Indian language outside of Central America, in 1821. This innovation allowed the Cherokee to achieve a higher rate of literacy than the whites around them in Georgia by the 1820s.
Over 16,000 Cherokee were forcibly relocated westward to Indian Territory in 1838 and 1839, a migration known as the Trail of Tears. As many as 4,000 died during the journey due to disease, exposure, and starvation, representing nearly a fifth of the population.
Stand Watie became the last Confederate General to stand down on the 25th of June 1865, two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. He was a Brigadier General of the Confederate States and the only other American Indian to hold that rank during the war besides Ely S. Parker.
The Cherokee Nation has more than 300,000 enrolled citizens, making it the largest of the 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States. The 2020 census recorded a total of 1,130,730 people claiming Cherokee ancestry, though the percentage of full-blood individuals is considered very low.