Fort Delaney, the U.S. Army’s post for the 1838 forced removal of Cherokee citizens from the upper Valley River Valley, stood in present-day Andrews. East Tennessee Mounted Volunteers built the fort in October 1837 with a palisade, log blockhouses, officers’ quarters, a blacksmith’s shop, a powder magazine, a hospital, and winter huttage for enlisted men. In June 1838, North Carolina troops stationed there arrested hundreds of Cherokee citizens from the nearby communities of Konahete, Dasetsi, and Little Tellico. The detainees assembled in camps around the fort before transferring to Fort Butler in present-day Murphy in their staged exodus to Oklahoma. Other Cherokee prisoners from the Cheoah, Nantahala, and Little Tennessee river valley communities rested at Fort Delaney on their way to Fort Butler. As many as 1,500 Cherokee detainees, about 10 percent of the total Cherokee population departing along the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma, passed through Fort Delaney in their tragic journey west. 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. Thousands perished during the forced relocation, known as the Trail of Tears, which resulted from the 1830 Indian Removal Act, an official government policy to purge Native nations from the eastern United States.