The 1835 Cherokee Census (sometimes called the Henderson roll) lists the Cherokee living in what remained of the Cherokee Nation in the east at that time, so that would be one place to look. Two lists of Cherokee East of the Mississippi (the Siler and Chapman rolls) were made in the early 1850’s in connection with a payment, so if your ancestor was Cherokee he (or his descendants) should appear on one of these three lists. In 1907 another payment list (the Guion Miller roll) was compiled and 30,000 eligible Cherokee or Cherokee descendants were identified. The Eastern Cherokee/Guion Miller applications asked for the names of spouses, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles so there is a huge amount of genealogical information there, even for the tens of thousands who were rejected.