In March of 1832, the Creek Nation ceded to the United States government their last remaining lands in Alabama, some 5 million acres situated between the Chattahoochee and Tallapoosa Rivers. The Alabama Legislature, meeting in Tuscaloosa in December 1832, created the first cession nine counties including Tallapoosa. About 15,000 Indians attached to the Hilibi, Oaktassi, Fish Pond, and Okfuskee lived west of the Tallapoosa river in the new county.

Less than a dozen whites live there. Following the cession, settlers swarmed across the Chattahoochee River from Georgia and from the adjacent Alabama counties. Under the terms of the treaty, settlers were to be excluded from the cession until the lands were surveyed, Indian reserves located, and the land made ready for sale. These orderly procedures were ignored. The first whites on the scene were squatters illegally settling down on the public domain. United States Marshal, Robert Crawford, trying desperately and successfully in Chambers County to keep squatters off private property reserved to individual Indian families declared that"among the intruders were some of the most lawless and uncouth men I have ever seen." Following on the heels of the settlers came the agents of land companies located in Montgomery and Columbus to buy up Indian reserves and public land for re-sale to settlers.

Three hundred and twenty acres was reserved for each Indian household. It was generally understood that the Indian family would sell their property to white settlers and then they were the rest of the tribe to land set-aside for them in the present state of Oklahoma. Just over 2 million acres was reserved Indian families, remaining 3 million acres was added to the public domain. Most of the land within the the future Youngfield, including prehistoric center of Alexander City, was in the public domain. To the north of Youngville Oaktasasi, Town, Hillabee Creeks, most of the land was reserved to an Indian family. Much of the best bottomland Oaktasasi and other nearby Creeks was assigned to the wealthy mixed--blood Graysons, descendants of Robert Grierson, a white trader in the Hillabee town. The Graysons sold their property and moved with the tribe to Oklahoma.