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 this forced relocation known as the Trail of Tears. This tragic episode resulted from the 1830 Indian Removal Act, an official government policy to purge Native nations from the eastern United States. Because the Cherokee community of Qualla Town had separated from the Cherokee Nation around 1820, its people were not legally required to emigrate to Oklahoma in 1838. By 1837, William H. Thomas, Qualla's white patron, had secured state and federal guarantees of the Qualla Town Cherokees' right to remain in their ancient homeland. Nevertheless, in September 1838, U.S. Army troops commanded by Lt. C.H. Larned came to Qualla searching for fugitives from the Cherokee Nation, ordered Yonaguska to assemble the community for inspection, counted Qualla Town people against an 1837 roster, and demanded Qualla scouts to find their own kinspeople hiding in the mountains while threatening deportation if the community did not cooperate. The conscripted Qualla scouts led the troops on wild goose chases through the Smokey Mountains, far from the fugitives' hiding places, and after the army withdrew from western North Carolina in November 1838, hundreds of Cherokee fugitives emerged from mountain hideouts and joined friends and relatives at Qualla Town, forming the nucleus of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.