the Tuckasegee and the
headwaters of the Little Tennessee, in the very heart of the Cherokee
country, and is still spoken by the great majority of those now living on
the Qualla reservation. In some of its phonetic forms it agrees with
the Eastern dialect, but resembles the Western in having the / sound.
The Western dialect was spoken in most of the towns of east Ten-
nessee and upper Georgia and upon Hiwassee and Cheowa rivers in
North Carolina. It is the softest and most musical of all the dialects
of this musical language, having a frequent liquid / and eliding many
of the harsher consonants found in the other forms. It is also the
literary dialect, and is spoken by most of those now constituting the
Cherokee Nation in the West.
Scattered among the other Cherokee are individualswhose pronun-
ciation and occasional peculiar terms for familiar objects give indica-
tion of a fourth and perhaps a fifth dialect, which can not now be
localized. It is possible that these differences may come from for-
eign admixture, as of Natchez. Taskigi, or Shawano blood. There is
some reason for believing that the people living on Nantahala river
differed dialectically from their neighbors on either side (;:).
The Iroquoian stock, to which the Cherokee belong, had its chief
home in the north, its tribes occupying a compact territory winch
comprised portions of Ontario, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania,
and extended down the Susquehanna and ( Jhesapeake bay almost to the
latitude of Washington. Another body, including the Tuscarora,
Nottoway, and perhaps also the Meherrin. occupied territory in north-
eastern North Carolina and the adjacent portion of Virginia. The
( 'herokee themselves