stylistic:style_transfer, linguistic:voice_change, stylistic:tone, structural:expansion
Slavery

Slavery was a component of Cherokee society prior to European colonization, as they frequently enslaved enemy captives taken during times of conflict with other indigenous tribes. By their oral tradition, the Cherokee viewed slavery as the result of an individual's failure in warfare and as a temporary status, pending release or the slave's adoption into the tribe. During the colonial era, Carolinian settlers purchased or impressed Cherokees as slaves during the late 17th and early 18th century. The Cherokee were also among the Native American peoples who sold Indian slaves to traders for use as laborers in Virginia and further north. They took them as captives in raids on enemy tribes.

As the Cherokee began to adopt some European-American customs, they began to purchase enslaved African Americans to serve as workers on their farms or plantations, which some of the elite families had in the antebellum years. When the Cherokee were forcibly removed on the Trail of Tears, they took slaves with them, and acquired others in Indian Territory.