The Qualla Boundary, a 56,000-acre home of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, borders Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Blue Ridge Parkway. The Cherokee originally held over 140,000 square miles in parts of eight states, but by the 1820s they held only a small territory. In the 1830s most Cherokees were forced to Oklahoma over what became the Trail of Tears. Forty-nine Cherokee households signed an 1819 treaty to stay in their ancestral homes as "Citizen Cherokees." With those who resisted removal they became the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. They later bought back some lands, and in 1889 the US government reserved the Qualla Boundary for them. The seat of Tribal government — executive, legislative, and judicial — is in Cherokee, North Carolina.