Trail Of Tears circa 1838

The Cherokee (Tsalagi) call the removal Nunna-da-ul-tsun-yi, the place where they cried. A minority led by Major Ridge signed the Treaty of New Echota in December 1835, and the Senate ratified it by a single vote on May 23, 1836, over protests from the Cherokee government's representatives at Red Clay. The majority under John Ross refused to believe force would be used. In May 1838 seven thousand soldiers under Winfield Scott began the roundup, and enslaved Black people were taken along. About fourteen thousand marched, and an estimated four thousand or more died.

What the plaque says

Trail Of Tears circa 1838 On October 20, 1837, B. B. Cannon with a group of 365 treaty party Cherokees camped near here on their way to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Rainey's Turnpike crossed here at the old John Fleming farm and in 1838 was one route used for the forced removal of the Cherokee Indians known as the "Trail of Tears."

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fall Creek Falls State Park — 8.5 mi
  A New Deal park on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, where Cane Creek has cut a gorge and a 256-foot waterfall drops into it.
• Savage Gulf State Park — 14 mi
  Roughly 19,000 acres of gorge and sandstone bluff on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, a state park of its own since 2022, with the Stone Door and a National Natural Landmark.
• Rock Island State Park — 18 mi
  A park where the Collins, Rocky and Caney Fork rivers meet at the head of Center Hill Lake, with a gorge of waterfalls below a 1917 dam and the remains of a cotton-mill town.
• Rhea County Courthouse — 27 mi
  The 1891 Dayton courthouse where John T. Scopes was tried in July 1925 for teaching evolution, with the second-floor courtroom restored and a trial museum in the basement.

More markers nearby

• Camp Forrest/Forrest Camp Spencer Artillery Range -ca. 1941-1946- — steps away
• Gilbert Gaul, Civil War Painter — 7.2 mi
• Burritt College — 11 mi
• Higgenbotham's Cave — 13 mi