Georgia coveted more than 7200 square miles of land in present-day north and northwest Georgia that belonged to the Cherokee Indians. It took the Georgia legislature six times to annex this land into the state. Each of the first five times the legislature realized they had made an error, and attempted to correct the problem.

Creation of the original county (in 1831) should not be viewed as the creation of a normal geo-political county unit. This large landmass did have a county seat in Harnage (now Tate, Georgia) along the old Federal Highway, but did not have the political infrastructure in place to handle even a small amount of civil or criminal cases -- these were handled, for the most part by bordering counties, and no structure was in place to deed land or handle the other functions of a county government. Another reason why this cannot be viewed as a legitimate county - Georgia did not own the land.

No legal treaty had been signed, or would ever be signed, ceding the land to the state of Georgia. Andrew Jackson and his Cherokee-hating cohorts, both in the state and federal government, would use the corrupt Treaty of New Echota to take the land that did not belong to them.