The first detachment of 1,103 Cherokees to emigrate under their own officers held a final council at Rattlesnake Springs near present-day Charleston, Tennessee, before leaving for the west and unanimously declared that they would continue their old constitution and laws upon arrival. John Benge, an officer of this first detachment, was a descendant of red-haired Chief Bench, who had fought for Cherokee freedom in the eighteenth century, and Benge's assistant was George Lowrey, admired by whites as the "Cherokee George Washington." John Burnett, a private in Captain McClellan's company, witnessed the Cherokees' forced removal west by the United States Government and recalled seeing helpless Cherokees arrested, dragged from their homes, and driven by bayonet into the stockades at present-day Fort Payne. On October 3, 1838, Cherokee leader John Benge left Fort Payne, and the detachment traveled by way of what are now Highway 33, Highway 75, and U.S. Highway 431 to Gunters Landing, where they were ferried across the Tennessee River before proceeding north to present-day Gurley and then northwest along the Flint River into Tennessee and west. Many died of hypothermia and starvation at the Three Forks of the Flint River, and more than 4,000 Cherokee Indians died in this forced removal known as the Trail of Tears, though many ancestors of American Indians reside in Alabama today.

Photo: Debra Oliver

Photo: Debra Oliver