What are the largest tribes in the United States?
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The Navajo Nation and the Cherokee Nation are the two largest tribes in the United States. Each reports several hundred thousand enrolled citizens. In the 2020 census, Cherokee was the most common tribal identity when people of mixed heritage are included, and Navajo was the largest among people reporting one tribe only.
There are two ways to measure size. One is enrolment: the number of citizens on a tribe's own rolls. The other is the census, in which people state their own identity and need not be enrolled anywhere. The two methods give different rankings.
By enrolment, the Navajo Nation and the Cherokee Nation are the largest, and both have reported around 400,000 citizens or more in recent years. Other large nations include the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and the Chickasaw Nation.
By land, the Navajo Nation is the largest. Its reservation covers about 27,000 square miles across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, an area larger than several US states. The Cherokee Nation, by contrast, is based in north-eastern Oklahoma, where its ancestors were forced to move in the 1830s.
In the 2020 census, about 9.7 million people identified as American Indian or Alaska Native, alone or in combination with another race. The United States recognised 574 tribes as of 2024, and many of them have only a few hundred members.