Fort Cedartown Cherokee Internment Fort
Cedartown, GA

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

Cherokee were numerous enough that Fort Cedartown was built near the center of town near Biggers Drive and North Furnace Street.

In 1898, a Dr. Charles K. Henderson wrote a history of Polk County in which he claimed that a company of U. S. troops “camped west of Cedartown on Big Cedar during the winter of 1837-38 to gather up the remnant of Indians which, refusing to go, had fled to the forest.” He goes on to say that in the spring of 1838, approximately 200 Indians “were carried from Cedartown along the Rome Road to Gunter’s Landing, now Guntersville on the Tennessee River, and from thence were sent to the far west.” Although Henderson does not credit his sources, we cannot discount his narrative.

Cedar Town lay in the southernmost portion of the Cherokee Nation in Georgia, in the Etowah District, just east of the Alabama line. As the southernmost segment of the Great Valley of the Appalachian Plateau, the Cedar Town area was and is underlain by limestone, through which poured numerous springs. Cherokees and, later, whites settled along the Coosa River tributaries such as Cedar Creek. Big Spring on Cedar Creek was perhaps the largest natural limestone spring in the South. Charley Town stood on Big Cedar Creek just north of Cedar Town. Henderson places Charley Town “south of Mr. Ake’s once the homestead of Mr. Lazanus Battle,” and states the town had “150 Indian huts built of pine poles and daubed inside and outside with mud.”ccclvi The 1836 valuations do not support Henderson’s description. Charle, apparently the town chief at the time of the evaluations, owned a log home with a piazza, a separate kitchen larger than his home, stables, a corn crib, peach trees, and 40 acres of improved land.ccclvii Other Cherokees on Cedar Creek lived in similarly comfortable homes that did not differ substantially from those of most white neighbors.

According to the 1835 Cherokee Census, Cherokees living along Cedar Creek, in and around Cedar Town, included Guts, Bill Cornsilk, Nancy Lying Fish, Waggon, Daniel Pumpkin Pile, Buckeye, House Bugg, Elooee, Greenwood, Winter Grapes, Charles, Toonowee, Catekeskee, Bear Sitting Down, Sahkeyah, Crow, Rinkle But, Little Tarapin, Sunday, Oonequonee, and their families.

There are also numerous eyewitness accounts of the Cherokees who were removed from their homes, through the claims filed against the U.S. government in 1842. This comes from Daniel Pumpkin Pile's claim:



The claimant in this case states on oath that he lived on Cedar Creek ... that he was forced to leave all the property charged in the account except three of the horses which were stolen by white men three years before he was forced from home, that he followed the men and saw his horses in their stable, but dared not take them as the white men were armed and forbid them...

Con ah Tau swore an oath to validate Daniel Pumpkin Pile's claim, which stated that he lost 150 bundles of fodder, one plough, four head of horses, a saddle, a bridle, an axe, and 25 head of hogs. Nancy and Daniel Pumpkinpile also testified in a separate claim that they lived on Cedar Creek, "and came to this country, one by water and the other (Nancy) with Stephen Foreman. That they were forced to give possession of this place to the whites, and never knew of it being valued at any time..." (meaning they were never paid for the loss of their home.)

A Cherokee named Uk kwahle stated that she "lived on Cedar Creek in the old nation, and that she came to this country with a company that was forced off, by the way of the River ... She states she was forced from home by the soldiers and driven to the boat to come to this country, and that all the property in the account was left, and lost to her, never having since heard from it..." She lost four head of horses, a cow and a calf, 27 head of hogs, 3/4 an acre of sweet potatoes, an acre of cotton, and most all of her other possessions. All of the Cherokees who once lived in the Cedar Town area were forced to abandon their homes, furniture, clothing, livestock, food, tools and agricultural fields. Like their white neighbors, they made their homes in log cabins with wood they had cut from the forests. Women kept vegetable gardens and helped men plant and harvest corn from the fields. They cooked in kitchens built behind their cabins and stored surplus food in corn cribs and potato houses. Nearly every Cherokee farm included an orchard of peach and apple trees. They raised pigs and chickens that they sometimes sold at local markets. Many local Cherokees owned horses and kept them in stables they built near their cabins. They used the abundant water in the Cedar Town area and constructed mills to grind corn into cornmeal. Leaving home against their will, the Cherokees had to give up almost everything they had built, raised, cultivated and cared for.

After they were rounded up, the 217 Cherokee prisoners in the Cedar Town Camp ate the same military rations two times a day. In Capt. Vincent’s company of 84 soldiers, each man cooked his own meal in a skillet over a camp fire and ate it from his mess pan. The army did not provide equipment for the Cherokees, who cooked with any container they had been able to gather up when they were arrested. The supply wagon that arrived at the Camp in late May, 1838, brought enough rations for the soldiers and all the captive Cherokee men, women and children. There were barrels with bacon, hard bread, flour, coffee and sugar. Soldiers were given candles for light at night and soap to wash themselves and their gear, but the Cherokees had neither. The army provided each soldier with a canvas tent, but there were no tents for the Cherokees. The soldiers and their Cherokee prisoners lived side by side here at the Cedar Town Camp for more than two weeks.

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