Camp Sixes Cherokee Internment Site

A view of the site of Sixes as seen from Sweetwater Park

This article is adapted from "Cherokee Removal: Forts Along the Georgia Trail of Tears" by Sarah H. Hill.

Supplies.
While stationed at New Echota, the companies received muskets, cartridge boxes, cartridge box belts, bayonet belts, bayonet scabbards, belt plats, picks, wipers, spring vices, musket ball cartridges, musket flints, gun slings, and team drivers.cxlii On May 26, 1838, invoices were sent for 12 teams that had gone to Sixes, possibly to carry infirm and elderly prisoners or Cherokee possessions.cxliii Plans were made in mid-June for the sale of all public property left at several of the posts, including Sixes.cxliv In the fall, Capt. John H. King, commander of the Cherokee (County?) Volunteers stationed at the Sixes, informed Gov. Gilmer that he had notified his company to return all public arms and accoutrements.cxlv King apparently was not a part of the removal companies stationed at Sixes but instead, presumably, was part of a Cherokee County company whose weapons were stored in the court house.

Prisoners.
On June 2, 1838, Gen. Floyd wrote that the officers at Sixes had not yet sent their prisoners. He had sent his staff Brigade Major to Sixes to order the Indians on to Ross’s Landing and to arrest the malingering commander if necessary.cxlvi Four days later, 825 Indians arrived at Ft. Wool from Sixes. They were escorted by two companies and were on their way to Ross’s Landing.cxlvii The total number removed from Sixes by June 9, 1838 was 950.cxlviii

Sources:
The resource that has been most useful regarding the military encampment at the Cherokee town of Sixes has been the Ga. Dept. of Archives and History. As part of a WPA project, much of the correspondence of Gov. George Gilmer relating to the removal of Indians was typed and compiled in three bound volumes collectively identified as Cherokee Letters, Talks, Treaties. Housed at the Archives, the volumes contain virtually all the information I have found on the encampment. In addition, the original manuscript correspondence of the governor contains relevant information. The National Archives branch in East Point, Ga. owns microfilmed copies of the National Archives’ original documents relating to Cherokee removal, and those films include information on Sixes as well as many other posts in Georgia.

cxxix See, for example, the 1834 H. S. Tanner map of the United States of America, the 1846 S. Augustus Mitchell map of Georgia, and the 1863 A.J. Johnson map of Georgia and Alabama on which the name is recorded as Sutalle.
cxxx R. Jerald Ledbetter, W. Dean Wood, Karen G. Wood, Robbie F. Etheridge, and Chad O. Braley, Cultural Resources Survey of Allatoona Lake Area Georgia Vol. 1 (Athens, GA: Southeast Archaeological Services, 1987), typescript, pp. 287- 92.
cxxxi GDAH, Letters Talks Treaties, 489. Brewster is later found living in Etowah, which was renamed Canton.
cxxxii David Williams, The Georgia Gold Rush, Twenty-Niners, Cherokees, and Gold fever (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 25-6.
cxxxiii Lt. Abram C. Fowler to Maj. Wager, Sept. 26, 1830, in Williams, Georgia Gold Rush, 33. cxxxiv GDAH, Letters Talks Treaties, 489.
cxxxv George White, Historical Collections of Georgia (New York: Pudney and Russell, 1854), 390.
cxxxvi Minutes of the Cherokee County Inferior Court, April 13, 1835, 31.
cxxxvii Shadburn, Cherokee Planters in Georgia, 62.
cxxxviii NARA RG 303 m1475 r1 fr 0209-10.
cxxxix NARA RG 393 m1475 r1 fr 0351-53. cxl GDAH RG 2-4-46 Box 75 Folder 11.
cxli NARA RG 393 m1475 r1 fr 0272-77.
cxlii NARA RG 393 m1475 r1 fr 0351-53.
cxliii NARA RG 92 Entry 350 Box 2 Vol 2 303-04.
cxliv NARA RG 393 m1475 r1 fr 0637-39.
cxlv GDAH Cherokee Letters Talks Treaties, 247.
cxlvi NARA RG 393 m1475 r1 fr 0500-01.
cxlvii NARA RG 393 m1475 r1 fr 0554-56.
cxlviii NARA RG 393 m1475 r1 fr 0272-77.