Happened to see this decal on a car window in a parking lot this afternoon:

These are the seven Cherokee clans that evolved in the nineteenth century (note the Cherokee script). Justice Poteete spoke disparagingly of people who claimed Cherokee ancestry but who couldn’t trace their lineage back to one of these clans. The number seven appears frequently in Cherokee iconography, thus the flag of the Cherokee Nation (which hangs in the Funk Heritage Center), featuring seven gold stars in a circle, each of which has seven rays:

One can also see seven pointed stars on this poster, which a colleague of mine has up in her office: