The Cherokee are a Native American people native to the American South, specifically Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. The Cherokee were considered to be civilized by the Europeans during the early 19th century, as the tribe adopted some Western practices, and the tribe would become one of the first tribes to be granted United States citizenship; in 1817, the right to acquire US citizenship was granted to all Cherokee people. The Cherokee would move towards the American West during the 1810s and 1820s, with significant communities moving to Arkansas and Oklahoma from northwestern Georgia, and the remaining Cherokee in the east were forced to walk the "Trail of Tears" to the Indian Territory under the Indian Removal Act during the 1830s. In 2017, there were 819,105 people of Cherokee ancestry in the USA, with 316,049 being enrolled members of the tribe.