During the Trail of Tears, thousands of Cherokee—young and old, rich and poor—faced disease, hunger, exhaustion, and extreme weather as they traveled hundreds of miles mostly on foot, and a thousand or more died on the way to a land they did not know. For many, the hardships began before the journey, when the government forcibly removed them from their homes in the spring of 1838. White settlers seized their last remaining possessions and livestock while federal troops and state militias simply watched. Cherokee families were then held in crowded, filthy removal camps in Tennessee and Alabama until it was time to depart to the West, where whooping cough, measles, smallpox, typhus, and tuberculosis spread rapidly. By the time they left the camps, many were weak, demoralized, and grieving loved ones who had not survived. Most detachments waited until autumn to begin the trek in order to avoid the extreme heat of summer, but then faced torrential rains, deep mud, and eventually frigid cold.