In 1838, the United States government deported more than 16,000 Cherokee Indian people from their homeland 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 resulted from the 1832 Indian Removal Act, an official government policy to purge native nations from the eastern United States. Fort Butler, on a nearby hilltop, served as the army headquarters for the Cherokee Removal in North Carolina. Tennessee Mounted Volunteers established the post as Camp Huntington in July 1836 and occupied its single log blockhouse and a few log barracks through 1837. In the spring of 1838, the U.S. Army expanded the post with a palisade wall, officers’ quarters, a hospital, offices, and other buildings. Brigadier General Abraham Eustis and his staff took command on June 2, 1838, while the 1st and 4th U.S. Artillery regiments and companies of the 3rd Regiment of North Carolina Volunteer Militia camped nearby. On June 12, 1838, state and federal troops began mass arrests of Cherokees in North Carolina. Some prisoners were brought directly from their homes to Fort Butler, while others were first held at forts Lindsay, Montgomery, Delaney, Hembree, or Camp Scott before being sent there. Prisoner camps spread north and east of the fort, where as many as 1,500 Cherokees at a time awaited transport to the emigration depot at Fort Cass in Charleston, Tennessee. During June and July 1838, more than 3,000 Cherokee prisoners from North Carolina and north Georgia passed through Fort Butler at the beginning of their westward exodus along the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma.