Cherokee removal

26 May 1838: the Georgia roundup opens

On 26 May 1838, federalized troops began coordinated roundups of Cherokee citizens across Georgia, operating from posts including Fort Hetzel near Ellijay and Fort Wool at New Echota. Fourteen removal posts had been established in the state.

The sweeps carried out orders of 24 May directing commanders to search repeatedly, imprison Cherokee citizens, and transport them to the Cherokee Agency, Ross's Landing or Gunter's Landing. Winfield Scott directed the operation, with about 2,200 federal soldiers initially under his command.

Taken straight to the stockade

About 150 federalized troops were reported at Fort Hetzel immediately before the roundup. Soldiers from that post captured Cherokee people attempting to flee into the mountains and brought them directly to the stockade, often without allowing them to retrieve possessions.

The stated reason was that letting families go home for belongings would spread warning "like lightning." In the first two days, Fort Hetzel's troops gathered 425 to 450 prisoners.

One commander reported splitting families deliberately, on the belief that relatives still hiding in the mountains would then surrender.

Confinement first, marching later

At New Echota, troops began imprisoning Cherokee people at the Fort Wool stockade for transfer to an emigration depot and removal west.

This was the start of the Georgia roundup, not a single nationwide departure. Georgia operations ran into June, roundups in Tennessee, North Carolina and Alabama began later, and the major overland detachments left mainly in the autumn and winter of 1838–1839.

For many people the first experience of removal was a stockade, and many deaths occurred in stockades and transfer camps before the westward marches began.