Fort Cass

Fort Cass, was a fort located on the Hiwassee River in present-day Charleston, Tennessee, that served as the military operational headquarters for the entire Cherokee removal, an forced migration of the Cherokee known as the Trail of Tears from their ancestral homelands in the Southeast to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Fort Cass housed a garrison of United States troops who watched over the largest concentration of internment camps where Cherokee were kept during the summer of 1838 before starting the main trek west to Indian Territory, and served as one of three emigration deports where the Cherokee began their journey west, the others of which were located at Ross's Landing in Chattanooga and Gunter's Landing near Guntersville, Alabama.

The Cherokee population had been spread over a region that included southeast Tennessee, southwest North Carolina, northern Georgia, and northeast Alabama. The first stage of the removal process was to gather the Cherokee into several encampments, the largest of which was Fort Cass. Nearby camps stretched for many miles through the valley south of Fort Cass toward present-day Cleveland, Tennessee, including two of which were located at Rattlesnake Springs. Other camps were located at Ross's Landing in Chattanooga and Fort Payne, Alabama. Fort Butler in Murphy, North Carolina served as the military headquarters in North Carolina.

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