See below: GUCK OR COCO GROUP. AMERICAN ABORIGINES: Cat Nation, or Eries. See below: HURONS, &c., and IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY: THEIR CONQUESTS, &c. AMERICAN ABORIGINES: Catawbas, or Kataba. See below: SIOUAN FAMILY; also, TIMUQUANAN. AMERICAN ABORIGINES: Cayugas. See below: IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY. AMERICAN ABORIGINES: Chancas. See PERU. AMERICAN ABORIGINES: Chapas, or Chapanecs. See below: ZAPOTECS, ETC. AMERICAN ABORIGINES: Cherokees. "The Cherokee tribe has long been a puzzling factor to students of ethnology and North American languages. Whether to be considered an abnormal offshoot from one of the well-known Indian stocks or families of North America, or the remnant of some undetermined or almost extinct family which has merged into another, appear to be questions yet unsettled." _C. Thomas, Burial Mounds of the Northern Sections of the United States (Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1883-4)_. Facts which tend to identify the Cherokees with the ancient "mound-builders" of the Ohio Valley--the Alleghans or Talligewi of Indian tradition--are set forth by Professor Thomas in a later paper, on the Problem of the Ohio Mounds, published by the Bureau of Ethnology in 1889 [see above: ALLEGHANS] and in a little book published in 1890, entitled "The Cherokees in Pre-Columbian Times." "The Cherokee nation has probably occupied a more prominent place in the affairs and history of what is now the United States of America, since the date of the early European settlements, than any other tribe, nation, or confederacy of Indians, unless it be possible to except the powerful and warlike league of the Iroquois or Six Nations of New York. It is almost certain that they were visited at a very early period [1540] following the discovery of the American continent by that daring and enthusiastic Spaniard, Fernando de Soto. ... At the time of the English settlement of the Carolinas the Cherokees occupied a diversified and well-watered region of country of large extent upon the waters of the Catawba, Broad, Saluda, Keowee, Tugaloo, Savannah, and Coosa rivers on the east and south, and several tributaries of the Tennessee on the north and west. ... In subsequent years, through frequent and long continued conflicts with the ever advancing white settlements, and the successive treaties whereby the Cherokees gradually yielded portions of their domain, the location and names of their towns were continually changing until the final removal of the nation [1836-1839] west of the Mississippi. ... This removal turned the Cherokees back in the calendar of progress and civilization at least a quarter of a century. The hardships and exposures of the journey, coupled with the fevers and malaria of a radically