For several years before the Removal the Cherokee were confronted with their future.
Illegal stockades were being built on Cherokee lands. A total of 17 of these stockades have been identified scattered across northern Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. The U.S. Government began arresting the Cherokee people in the spring of 1838 and imprisoning them in these stockades. Conditions were unbelievably horrible. The stockades were manned by the "Georgia Guard" who passed their days by tormenting and abusing the Cherokee. Food intended for the captives was sold to settlers, what little the Cherokee had brought with them was stolen and sold. As stories of the conditions of these stockades (Forts) many Cherokee refused to report to the forts. The Georgia Guard considered them renegades and hunted them down like animals.
Many Cherokee and the aggressors kept journals, wrote letters and told the stories of the events. This site and our book, "Yea Though I Walk Through" tells the story on their own words.