Page "Chattooga County, Georgia" Paragraph 18

Chattooga county has a long and interesting history.

It is named for the Chattooga River, which flows through it.

It was originally settled by the ' mound builder ' culture.

A few small mounds can be found throughout the Alpine and Menlo areas.

Sometime in the pre-European settlement era, the county was settled by at first the Creek Native Americans and later the Cherokee Native Americans.

The principle Cherokee towns in Chattooga were Rivertown ( Trion ) and Broomtown in Shinbone valley.

With the onset of European settlers and after gold was discovered in northern Georgia, the federal government forcibly removed the Cherokees to Oklahoma from Chattooga county in the early 1830s in what has become known as " the Trail Of Tears.

" In this removal, thousands of Native Americans died from sickness, hunger and abuse.

The land was then divided amongst white settlers in the Cherokee Land Lottery of 1832.

The Lottery transformed Chattooga into a thriving agricultural area in the antebellum South with farms of varying size dotting the fertile landscape of the Chattooga Valley.