In 1838, the United States government deported more than 16,000 Cherokee Indian people from their homelands in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, and thousands perished during the forced relocation known as the Trail of Tears. This episode resulted from the 1830 Indian Removal Act, an official policy to purge native nations from the eastern United States. The Aquohee District Courthouse, which stood 500 feet to the northwest, was the judicial hub for most Cherokee communities in southwestern North Carolina, the de facto capital of the district, the Town House or council house for Hiwassee Town, and a center for Cherokee political resistance to removal. In 1837, British traveler George Featherstonhaugh described it as an open octagon built of logs where Cherokees held courts, dances, and other ceremonies. In September 1835, U.S. commissioners Benjamin Currey and John Schermerhorn tried to convene a removal treaty conference there, but Cherokee failure to attend thwarted the effort, and in December 1835 they instead assembled a small contingent of pro-removal Cherokees at New Echota and concluded the treaty that led to the Cherokees' expulsion from their homelands and the Trail of Tears in 1838.