In the 1830s, Dirt Town reflected the lives of most Cherokee communities, where people lived as subsistence farmers in simple log cabins with small cornfields, fruit orchards, and ranged livestock, in sharp contrast to a small wealthy minority of Cherokee planters who owned large homes, plantations, slaves, and ferries. In 1836, federal agents valued the estate of Dirt Town resident Eskalo at $296.75, a level typical for most Cherokee families, while nearby Treaty Party leader Major Ridge held plantations and other property worth more than $81,000. When members of that wealthy minority signed a fraudulent treaty ceding eastern Cherokee lands, the people of Dirt Town and most Cherokee citizens strongly opposed it, but their resistance failed to prevent arrests and deportation by the U.S. Army and Georgia militia in May and June 1838. Rich and poor alike were driven from their eastern homelands in a bitter exodus to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, though poorer Cherokee such as Dirt Town's residents suffered most in detention and relocation. Their Trail of Tears journey brought high mortality during one of the coldest winters of the 19th century. More broadly, federal Indian removal policy sparked fierce debate, with supporters calling it benevolent and opponents condemning its inhumanity, while it opened millions of acres of Indian land to white settlement. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced thousands of American Indians from ancestral lands to Indian Territory, including approximately 16,000 Cherokee, 21,000 Muscogee (Creek), 9,000 Choctaw, 6,000 Chickasaw, and 4,000 Seminole, many of whom traveled in fall to avoid summer disease and heat only to face deadly winter conditions. Despite these hardships, removed members of the five tribes established new lives in the West; Cherokee survivors created a new sovereign nation in present-day Oklahoma, while some who remained in North Carolina later formed the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

Photo: Tom Bosse