There are a lot more Cherokees than just those whose names appear on the Dawes Roll. This seems to be limited only to those who can claim their ancestors were driven to Indian Territory along the "Trail of Tears."

Here is a little background on the subject from my cousin, Chief Red Bear, of the Florida Cherokees--I forget the actual tribe name apart from Cherokee. He and I are of the same extraction and the same amount of Cherokee blood--something that is nearly impossibe to figure.

I have been avoiding a direct confrontation with the answer to your question, what percent Cherokee blood was so and so? I have to go back over 1500 years to answer this. Leaders of the Cherokee have realized for many years that being Cherokee is a state of mind and oral family history more than a fact that someone can support with. "proof" . I can legally prove that I am of Cherokee blood lines, but lets go back and examine Cherokee culture and history.
       Our biggest problem is that the Cherokee apparently always were a matriarchal society. Property descended in the maternal side of the family. Which makes sense because you might not know who your father was, but your mother is obvious. Selection of a mate was also the prerogative of the females. When captives were brought back from battle, the eligible females could choose a mate from them, the rest were usually made slaves or killed. When a woman decided she was tired of a mate, all she had to do was to move his things out of the domicile. She kept the property and children and if she was inclined to, she went looking for a new mate. Being a male wasn' t all that bad, all they had to do was hunt, fish, sit around the fire with the other males, in a square, flaking spear and arrow points, swapping lies, and to procreate on demand. The women maintained and kept the house, and planted, cultivated, and harvested the crops. They also were responsible for the training of the children but the saying that, It takes a village to raise a child started with them.
       Another problem we have in our blood quantum search is that a male must not marry a member of his own clan or village. Every marriage was mixed marriage. The male left his own clan or village and became part of the female's clan or village. Now that we have established the ground rules for the Culture, we can take up the History.   
       Some time before or early during the first millennium (000 to 999 AD), the Ani Yunawiya, the Principal People, as they called themselves, arrived on the West coast of what is now South America. They were very like the Ainu, the original people of Japan, before the Chinese invasion, of whom there are only a few left on an isolated island, Hokkaido, off the Northern Japanese coast. Kitty, our son Charlie, and I visited them for a week in 1989. There is museum there with arrow and spear points, and pottery, very similar to that found today in North Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee. They look somewhat Caucasian, like us.

There are legends of them in Peru, Guatemala, Yucatan, Mexico, Monterey, Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, as they traveled North. Intermarrying as the went, they picked up new blood and left Ani Yunawiya behind. The new millennium, 1000 AD, found them on the East bank of the Mississippi River where the Missouri River enters from the West. Here the priests of the areas they had passed thru, who had been absorbed into the Nation, gained ascendancy and kept them overworked, building mounds larger than any other anywhere else.
       About 1250 AD, they decided they had had enough and, killing their priests, moved East. They intended to settle along the Atlantic coast, but the Delaware people would have none of it. Retreating to the Appalachian mountains, a large number broke away from the major group and went North to establish the Iroquois nation in what is now New York state. The similarity of the languages exists today. Intermarriage with the other Nations continued and when the European people came, they intermarried with them. There is no secret as to why the Cherokee were, by far the largest Native group when the Arawac natives discovered Columbus, wandering around lost in the off-shore islands in 1492 AD. -- Chuck Red Bear Smith, Retired Chief.