 During the Thomas Jefferson and Indian Removal era, many Cherokee were voluntarily relocating from Georgia along the Arkansas River, including in Yell County, between 1775 and 1786.A large Cherokee reservation across the Arkansas River from Yell County was established in 1815 to encourage further voluntary relocation from Georgia.The area presently encompassed as Yell County was first settled by European settlers when James Carden built a house among Cherokee farms in the Dardanelle Bottoms at the confluence of the Arkansas and Petit Jean Rivers in 1819.