Beaver Dam, 1830: Cherokee Police Evict Settlers From Their Homes at Cave Spring

In February 1830, seventeen white families from Georgia and Alabama illegally took possession of Cherokee homes in the Beaver Dam settlement, in the area known today as Cave Spring. Cherokee Chief John Ross sent a mounted police force, the Light Horse Brigade, to put them out. The National Park Service calls it the most prominent instance of active Cherokee resistance to unauthorized white settlement on Cherokee land.

What happened at Beaver Dam

Major Ridge, David Vann and the brigade went from home to home, forcibly evicting the intruders and burning empty Cherokee structures to discourage future settlement. Retaliation came the following day, in the death of one Cherokee and the imprisonment of others.

The Cherokee Phoenix and Indians' Advocate printed an account on February 10, 1830. It said a company of Cherokees acting under the Principal Chief's authority found 17 families of intruders living in Cherokee houses and ordered them out, that their bedding and chairs were carried out safely before the houses were set on fire, and that the Cherokees used no violence. The paper also reported a Cherokee killed by intruders and three more taken bound into Georgia.

Illustrations of Major Ridge (left) and David Vann (right). Library of Congress.

Clipping from the Cherokee Phoenix and Indians' Advocate, Wednesday, February 10, 1830.

After this incident, the Cherokee sought only political solutions to intrusions from Georgia and no longer tried to evict whites by force. A log structure that stood at the site witnessed the event, and it is one of the last remnants of Beaver Dam in today's Cave Spring and Vann's Valley.

The Green Hotel contains an original log structure that predates Cherokee removal, possibly as early as 1810. NPS image.

The wider removal

The Cherokee Nation once spread across Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama and was home to thousands of men, women and children. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 required the Cherokee to give up their land and move west, and many refused. The policy set off a fierce, bitter debate. Supporters called it a benevolent act that would save the tribes east of the Mississippi River from being overwhelmed by an expanding American population; opponents decried its inhumanity and tragic consequences. One thing was certain: removal freed millions of acres of desired Indian land for white settlers.

In the spring of 1838, soldiers set up forts and camps across the Cherokee homeland and rounded up every Cherokee they could find. The Cherokee knew it was coming and chose to resist by waiting in their homes to be forced out by militias. In the camps they suffered exposure, disease epidemics, inadequate sanitation and heartbreak, and stayed prisoners until their final deportation west.

In one account, Oo-loo-cha, the widow of Sweet Water, described it in an account from 1842: soldiers surrounded the house, took the mare while the family worked in the fields, drove everyone outdoors and allowed them to take nothing, not even a second change of clothes. They were marched on foot to Ross' Landing, even the small children, and sent off.

In the 1830s, the federal government forcibly removed approximately the following numbers of people from their ancestral homes in the southeastern United States:

NPS image.

The people removed traveled by existing roads and rivers. Many groups left in the fall to avoid the disease and heat of summer travel and instead met treacherous winter weather. Many died on the Trail of Tears.

Today

Despite the hardships of the journey, members of the five removed tribes built new lives in the West and are now sovereign nations that preserve their cultural traditions while adapting to the challenges of the 21st century. Cherokee who survived the Trail of Tears created a new sovereign nation in present-day Oklahoma. Some Cherokee stayed in North Carolina and, through a special exemption, formed the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

The National Park Service and its partners preserve historic sites and trail segments and develop areas for public use, so the story of the removal is remembered and told. NPS image.

Sources

• National Park Service, Cave Springs and the Trail of Tears; rewritten in hubnx's own words.