The EBCI also own, hold, or maintain additional lands in the vicinity, and as far away as 100 miles (160 km) from the Qualla Boundary. When they reorganized as a tribe, they had to buy back the land from the US government. The history of the Eastern Band closely follows that of the Qualla Boundary, a land trust made up of an area of their original territory. Those Cherokee remaining in the East were to give up tribal Cherokee citizenship and to assimilate. military, under the Indian Removal Act, moved the other 15,000 Cherokee to west of the Mississippi River in the late 1830s, to Indian Territory.

They are descended from the small group of 800–1,000 Cherokee who remained in the Eastern United States after the U.S. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians ( EBCI), ( Cherokee: ᏣᎳᎩᏱ ᏕᏣᏓᏂᎸᎩ, Tsalagiyi Detsadanilvgi) is a federally recognized Indian Tribe based in Western North Carolina in the United States.