The Trail of Tears was part of a series of forced displacements of approximately 60,000 Native Americans of the Five Civilized Tribes between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government known as the Indian removal. Tribal members "moved gradually, with complete migration occurring over a period of nearly a decade." Members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to areas to the west of the Mississippi River that had been designated 'Indian Territory'. The forced relocations were carried out by government authorities after the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. The Cherokee removal in 1838 was brought on by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega, Georgia in 1828, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush.
Union County is a county located in the north central portion of the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 21,356. The county seat is Blairsville. Its Sole commissioner is Lamar Paris, who has served since 2001.
Cherokee County is located in the US state of Georgia. As of 2019 estimates, the population was 258,773. The county seat is Canton, population 29,306 (2018). The county Board of Commissioners is the governing body, with members elected to office. Cherokee County is included in the Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Roswell, Georgia metropolitan statistical area.
The city of Dahlonega is the county seat of Lumpkin County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 5,242, and in 2018 the population was estimated to be 6,884.
Franklin is a town in and the county seat of Macon County, North Carolina. It is situated within the Nantahala National Forest. The population was estimated to be 4,105 in 2019, an increase from 3,845 reported in the 2010 census.
Ducktown is a city in Polk County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 427 at the 2000 census and 475 at the 2010 census. It is included in the Cleveland Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The State of Franklin was an unrecognized proposed state located in what is today East Tennessee, United States. Franklin was created in 1784 from part of the territory west of the Appalachian Mountains that had been offered by North Carolina as a cession to Congress to help pay off debts related to the American War for Independence. It was founded with the intent of becoming the 14th state of the new United States.
Auraria is a ghost town in Lumpkin County, Georgia, United States, southwest of Dahlonega. Its name derives from aurum, the Latin word for gold. In its early days, it was also known variously as Dean, Deans, Nuckollsville, and Scuffle Town.
The Calhoun Mine is perhaps the oldest and best-known mine in Lumpkin County, Georgia. When gold was discovered in Lumpkin County in 1828, which led to the Georgia Gold Rush in 1829, it was discovered on 239 acres (0.97 km2) owned by Robert Obar. After at least two intermediary sales, the land was purchased by Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who was also the 7th Vice President of the United States. Calhoun started a mining company to mine the land and later allowed his son-in-law Thomas Green Clemson, the founder of Clemson University, to manage it. The ore deposit was a very rich deposit and, according to an 1856 letter from Clemson to his brother-in-law, was still producing significant quantities of gold nearly 30 years after its initial discovery on the land. This mine - along with the Consolidated Mine and the Loud Mine - were some of the most productive mines in the Georgia Gold Belt.
The Sixes Mine is a group of former gold placer mines in the Georgia Gold Belt. They are near Sixes in Cherokee County, Georgia, United States, located off Bell's Ferry Road, south of Canton, Georgia.
Johns Creek is a city in Fulton County, Georgia, United States. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the population was 76,728. The city is a northeastern suburb of Atlanta.
The Georgia land lotteries were an early nineteenth century system of land redistribution in Georgia. Under this system, white male citizens could register for a chance to win lots of land that had been stolen from the Muscogee and the Cherokee Nation. The lottery system was utilized by the State of Georgia between the years 1805 and 1833 “to strengthen the state and increase the population in order to increase Georgia's power in the House of Representatives.” Although some other states used land lotteries, none were implemented at the scale of the Georgia contests.
Nikwasi comes from the Cherokee word for "star", Noquisi (No-kwee-shee), and is the site of the Cherokee town which is first found in colonial records in the early 18th century, but is much older. The town covered about 100 acres on the floodplain of the Little Tennessee River. Franklin, North Carolina, was later developed by European Americans around this site.
The Georgia Gold Rush was the second significant gold rush in the United States and the first in Georgia, and overshadowed the previous rush in North Carolina. It started in 1829 in present-day Lumpkin County near the county seat, Dahlonega, and soon spread through the North Georgia mountains, following the Georgia Gold Belt. By the early 1840s, gold became difficult to find. Many Georgia miners moved west when gold was found in the Sierra Nevada in 1848, starting the California Gold Rush. Since the 16th century, American Indians in Georgia told European explorers that the small amounts of gold which they possessed came from mountains of the interior. Some poorly documented accounts exist of Spanish or French mining gold in North Georgia between 1560 and 1690, but they are based on supposition and on rumors passed on by Indians. In summing up known sources, W.S. Yeates observed: "Many of these accounts and traditions seem to be quite plausible. Nevertheless, it is hardly probable that the Spaniards would have abandoned mines which were afterwards found to be quite profitable, as those in North Georgia."
The Gold Lottery of 1832 was the seventh lottery of the Georgia Land Lotteries, a lottery system used by the State of Georgia between the years 1805 and 1832 to distribute land. It was authorized by the Georgia General Assembly by an act of December 24, 1831 a few years after the start of the Georgia Gold Rush. The act specified that approximately one third of the 160-acre (0.65 km2) land districts to be distributed by lottery under the act of December 21, 1830, be designated as gold districts of 40 acres (160,000 m2) each and to be distributed in a separate lottery. The drawings for the Gold Lottery of 1832 occurred between October 22, 1832 and May 1, 1833 and applied to land that had been owned by the Cherokee Nation.
William Greeneberry "Green" Russell (1818–1877) was an American prospector and miner.
Draketown is an unincorporated community in Haralson County, Georgia, United States. It was first settled by the Mound Builders. Around the 15th or 16th century, the Cherokee Indians and Creek Indians replaced the Mound Builders and began their own society. Mostly the Cherokee Indians settled In the Draketown area.
Cherokee is a former gold mining community in Nevada County, California. As explained below, it has also been known as Patterson, Melrose and Tyler. It is located on the San Juan Ridge about 4 miles east of North San Juan. Its elevation is 2,516 ft (767 m) above sea level.
Too-Cowee, was an important historic Cherokee town located near the Little Tennessee River north of present-day Franklin, North Carolina. It also had a prehistoric platform mound and earlier village built by ancestral peoples. As their expression of public architecture, the Cherokee built a townhouse on top of the mound. It was the place for their community gatherings in their highly decentralized society. The name translates to "pig fat" in English. British traders and colonists referred to Cowee as one of the Cherokee Middle Towns along this river; they defined geographic groupings based in relation to their coastal settlements, such as Charlestown, South Carolina.
