The Qualla Boundary is not strictly a reservation, but rather a "land trust" supervised by the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. The land is a fragment of the extensive original homeland of the Cherokee Nation, which once stretched from western Virginia, North and South Carolina, and west to present-day southeastern Tennessee and northeastern Alabama. In the 19th century, the people had to purchase their land to regain it after it was taken over by the US government through treaty cessions, which had all been negotiated by a small percentage of assimilated Cherokees.