Editing Cherokee (section)

==Origins==
[[File:Smoky Mtn View.jpg|thumb|500px|[[Great Smoky Mountains]]]]
Anthropologists and historians have two main theories of Cherokee origins. One is that the Cherokee, an Iroquoian-speaking people, migrated to Southern [[Appalachia]] from northern areas around the Great Lakes in {{clarification needed span|late prehistoric times.|What is "late prehistoric" in this context?  A date range is essential.|date=January 2025}} The area became territory of the  ''[[Iroquois]]'' (also known as the "''Haudenosaunee''") nations and other Iroquoian-speaking peoples of the Southeast such as the [[Tuscarora people]] of the Carolinas, and the [[Meherrin]] and [[Nottaway]] of Virginia. The other theory is that the Cherokee had been in the Southeast for thousands of years and that proto-Iroquoian developed there instead of in the north. 

Supporting the first theory are recorded conversations of Cherokee elders made by ethnographer [[James Mooney]] in the late 19th century, who recounted an oral tradition of their people migrating south from the [[Great Lakes]] region in ancient times.<ref name="Mooney 1900 393"/> They occupied territories where earthwork [[platform mounds]] were built by peoples during the earlier Woodland period.

The people of the [[Woodland_period#Middle_Woodland_period_(200_BCE_–_500_CE)|Middle Woodland period]] are believed to be ancestors of the historic Cherokee and occupied what is now [[Western North Carolina]], circa 200 to 600 CE. They are believed to have built what is called the [[Biltmore Mound]], found in 1984 south of the [[Swannanoa River]] on the Biltmore Estate, which has numerous Native American sites.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2017/08/21/answer-man-did-cherokee-live-biltmore-estate-lands-early-settlers/581792001/|title=Answer Man: Did the Cherokee live on Biltmore Estate lands? Early settlers?|last=Boyle|first=John|work=[[Asheville Citizen-Times]]|date=August 21, 2017|access-date=August 21, 2017}}</ref><!-- Need additional sources - a local newspaper is not the place for establishing such technical data based on archeological evidence. -->

Other ancestors of the Cherokee are considered to be part of the later [[Pisgah phase]] of [[South Appalachian Mississippian culture]], a regional variation of the [[Mississippian culture]] that arose circa 1000 and lasted to 1500 CE.<ref>Sturtevant and Fogelson, 132</ref> There is a consensus among most specialists in Southeast archeology and anthropology about these dates. But Finger says that ancestors of the Cherokee people lived in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee for a far longer period of time.<ref>Finger, 6–7</ref> Additional mounds were built by peoples during this cultural phase. Typically in this region, towns had a single [[platform mound]] and served as a political center for smaller villages.