During the first week of December in 1838, a group of more than 1,100 Cherokees led by John Benge passed through Old Greenville on their journey to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. They were one of 13 groups displaced from their traditional eastern homeland by the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Traveling under their own supervision, nearly 16,000 Cherokees made the overland trek west during the fall and bitterly cold winter of 1838-1839 on what is now known as the Trail of Tears. The Benge Detachment included families from Wills Valley in northeastern Alabama, some of them wealthy slave owners, and a few Muscogee Creeks living among the Cherokees also traveled with them. After traversing Tennessee, they crossed the Mississippi River at Columbus, Kentucky, followed established roads around the swamps of southeast Missouri, and circled north through Charleston, Benton, and Jackson. By the time they reached Old Greenville with 60 wagons and 600 horses, they had been on the road for nine weeks and still faced another six weeks of winter travel over rough roads. They waded across the St. Francis River at Bettis Ford, then crossed the Current River above Hix Ferry on December 8th, were near Smithville, Arkansas, on December 12th, and at Batesville on the 15th. They forded the White River at Talbert's Ferry, proceeded west through Fayetteville, and after reaching Indian Territory disbanded near Stilwell, Oklahoma, on January 11, 1839. During this grueling 103 day, 770-mile journey, three births and 33 deaths were recorded. The forced removal also affected other southeastern Indian tribes, including the Choctaw, Muscogee Creek, Seminole, and Chickasaw, who were dispossessed by the Indian Removal Act of 1830.