During the winter of 1838–39, the great Native American Cherokee Nation trekked across southern Illinois, in a forced removal by the U.S. government from their ancestral homeland in Tennessee. Harried, unequipped, and unsupported by their captors, thousands died on the Trail of Tears. Burial records were not kept, and burial locations remain lost to this day. Local history suggests that some Illinois settlers allowed the Cherokee to bury their dead on small plots of land adjacent to their own family cemeteries. One such plot, the Campground Presbyterian Church cemetery near Anna, Illinois, may contain unmarked Cherokee graves.