Their residence at present is the 56,000-acre Qualla frontier in Western North Carolina adjoining the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Today's Eastern Band members are straight descendents of those who survived the Cherokees' enforced removal to Oklahoma in the 1830's after 15000 Cherokee moved to the west in the 19th century following the Indian Removal Act, but only on the circumstance that they absorb and forsake Cherokee identity. What is now known as Western North Carolina used to be the homeland of the Cherokee people for innumerable centuries.