Tennessee
Indian law, tradition, and even superstition had shaped the conditions
which the pioneers faced when they crossed the mountains. This savage
inheritance had decreed that Kentucky should be a dark and bloody
ground, fostering no life but that of four-footed beasts, its fertile
sod never to stir with the green push of the corn. And so the white men
who went into Kentucky to build and to plant went as warriors go, and
for every cabin they erected they battled as warriors to hold a fort. In
the first years they planted little corn and reaped less, for it may be
said that their rifles were never out of their hands. We have seen how
stations were built and abandoned until but two stood. Untiring
vigilance and ceaseless warfare were the price paid by the first
Kentuckians ere they turned the Indian's place of desolation and death
into a land productive and a living habitation.
Herein lies the difference, slight apparently, yet significant, between
the first Kentucky and the first Tennessee ¹ colonies. Within the memory
of the Indians only one tribe had ever attempted to make their home in
Kentucky--a tribe of the fighting Shawanoes--and they had been terribly
chastised for their temerity. But Tennessee was the home of the
Cherokees, and at Chickasaw Bluffs (Memphis) began the southward trail
to the principal towns of the Chickasaws. By the red man's fiat, then,
human life might abide in Tennessee, though not in Kentucky, and it
followed that in seasons of peace the frontiersmen might settle in
Tennessee. So it was that as early as 1757, before the great Cherokee
war, a company of Virginians under Andrew Lewis had, on an invitation
from the Indians, erected Fort Loudon near Great Telliko, the Cherokees'
principal town, and that, after the treaty of peace in 1761, Waddell and
his rangers of North Carolina had erected a fort on the Holston.
¹ Tennessee. The name, Ten-as-se, appears on Adair's map as one of the
old Cherokee towns. Apparently neither the meaning nor the reason why
the colonists called both state and river by this name has been handed
down to us.
Though Fort Loudon had fallen tragically during the war, and though
Waddell's fort had been abandoned, neither was without influence in the
colonization of Tennessee, for some of the men who built these forts
drifted back a year or two later and set up the first cabins on the
Holston. These earliest settlements, thin and scattered, did not
survive; but in 1768 the same settlers or others of their
kind--discharged militiamen from Back Country regiments--once more made
homes on the Holston. They were joined by a few families from near the
present Raleigh, North Carolina, who had despaired of seeing justice
done to the tenants on the mismanaged estates of Lord Granville. About
the same time there was erected the first cabin on the Watauga River, as
is generally believed, by a man of the name of William Bean (or Been),
hunter and frontier soldier from Pittsylvania County, Virginia. This
man, who had hunted on the Watauga with Daniel Boone in 1760, chose as
the site of his dwelling the place of the old hunting camp near the
mouth of Boone's Creek. He soon began to have neighbors.
Meanwhile the Regulation Movement stirred the Back Country of both the
Carolinas. In 1768, the year in which William Bean built his cabin on
the bank of the Watauga, five hundred armed Regulators in North
Carolina, aroused by irregularities in the conduct of public office,
gathered to assert their displeasure, but dispersed peaceably on receipt
of word from Governor Tryon that he had ordered the prosecution of any
officer found guilty of extortion. Edmund Fanning, the most hated of
Lord Granville's agents, though convicted, escaped punishment. Enraged
at this miscarriage of justice, the Regulators began a system of
terrorization by taking possession of the court, presided over by
Richard Henderson. The judge himself was obliged to slip out by a back
way to avoid personal injury. The Regulators burned his house and
stable. They meted out mob treatment likewise to William Hooper, later
one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Two elements, with antithetical aims, had been at work in the
Regulation; and the unfortunate failure of justice in the case of
Fanning had given the corrupt element its opportunity to seize control.
In the petitions addressed to Governor Tryon by the leaders of the
movement in its earlier stages the aims of liberty-loving thinkers are
traceable. It is worthy of note that they included in their demands
articles which are now constitutional. They desired that "suffrage be
given by ticket and ballot"; that the mode of taxation be altered, and
each person be taxed in proportion to the profits arising from his
estate; that judges and clerks be given salaries instead of perquisites
and fees. They likewise petitioned for repeal of the act prohibiting
dissenting ministers from celebrating the rites of matrimony. The
establishment of these reforms, the petitioners of the Regulation
concluded, would "conciliate" their minds to "every just measure of
government, and would make the laws what the Constitution ever designed
they should be, their protection and not their bane." Herein clearly
enough we can discern the thought and the phraseology of the Ulster
Presbyterians.
But a change took place in both leaders and methods. During the
Regulators' career of violence they were under the sway of an agitator
named Hermon Husband. This demagogue was reported to have been expelled
from the Quaker Society for cause; it is on record that he was expelled
from the North Carolina Assembly because a vicious anonymous letter was
traced to him. He deserted his dupes just before the shots cracked at
Alamance Creek and fled from the colony. He was afterwards apprehended
in Pennsylvania for complicity in the Whisky Insurrection.
Four of the leading Presbyterian ministers of the Back Country issued a
letter in condemnation of the Regulators. One of these ministers was the
famous David Caldwell, son-in-law of the Reverend Alexander Craighead,
and a man who knew the difference between liberty and license and who
proved himself the bravest of patriots in the War of Independence. The
records of the time contain sworn testimony against the Regulators by
Waightstill Avery, a signer of the Mecklenburg Resolves, who later
presided honorably over courts in the western circuit of Tennessee; and
there is evidence indicating Jacobite and French intrigue. That Governor
Tryon recognized a hidden hand at work seems clearly revealed in his
proclamation addressed to those "whose understandings have been run away
with and whose passions have been led in captivity by some evil
designing men who, actuated by cowardice and a sense of that Publick
Justice which is due to their Crimes, have obscured themselves from
Publick view." What the Assembly thought of the Regulators was expressed
in 1770 in a drastic bill which so shocked the authorities in England
that instructions were sent forbidding any Governor to approve such a
bill in future, declaring it "a disgrace to the British Statute Books."
On May 16, 1771, some two thousand Regulators were precipitated by
Husband into the Battle of Alamance, which took place in a district
settled largely by a rough and ignorant type of Germans, many of whom
Husband had lured to swell his mob. Opposed to him were eleven hundred
of Governor Tryon's troops, officered by such patriots as Griffith
Rutherford, Hugh Waddell, and Francis Nash. During an hour's engagement
about twenty Regulators were killed, while the Governor's troops had
nine killed and sixty-one wounded. Six of the leaders were hanged. The
rest took the oath of allegiance which Tryon administered.
It has been said about the Regulators that they were not cast down by
their defeat at Alamance but "like the mammoth, they shook the bolt from
their brow and crossed the mountains," but such flowery phrases do not
seem to have been inspired by facts. Nor do the records show that
"fifteen hundred Regulators" arrived at Watauga in 1771, as has also
been stated. Nor are the names of the leaders of the Regulation to be
found in the list of signatures affixed to the one "state paper" of
Watauga which was preserved and written into historic annals. Nor yet do
those names appear on the roster of the Watauga and Holston men who, in
1774, fought with Shelby under Andrew Lewis in the Battle of Point
Pleasant. The Boones and the Bryans, the Robertsons, the Seviers, the
Shelbys, the men who opened up the West and shaped the destiny of its
inhabitants, were genuine freemen, with a sense of law and order as
inseparable from liberty. They would follow a Washington but not a
Hermon Husband.
James Hunter, whose signature leads on all Regulation manifestoes just
prior to the Battle of Alamance, was a sycophant of Husband, to whom he
addressed fulsome letters; and in the real battle for democracy--the War
of Independence--he was a Tory. The Colonial Records show that those
who, "like the mammoth," shook from them the ethical restraints which
make man superior to the giant beast, and who later bolted into the
mountains, contributed chiefly the lawlessness that harassed the new
settlements. They were the banditti and, in 1776, the Tories of the
western hills; they pillaged the homes of the men who were fighting for
the democratic ideal.
It was not the Regulation Movement which turned westward the makers of
the Old Southwest, but the free and enterprising spirit of the age. It
was emphatically an age of doers; and if men who felt the constructive
urge in them might not lay hold on conditions where they were and
reshape them, then they must go forward seeking that environment which
would give their genius its opportunity.
Of such adventurous spirits was James Robertson, a Virginian born of
Ulster Scot parentage, and a resident of (the present) Wake County,
North Carolina, since his boyhood. Robertson was twenty-eight years old
when, in 1770, he rode over the hills to Watauga. We can imagine him as
he was then, for the portrait taken much later in life shows the type of
face that does not change. It is a high type combining the best
qualities of his race. Intelligence, strength of purpose, fortitude, and
moral power are there; they impress us at the first glance. At
twenty-eight he must have been a serious young man, little given to
laughter; indeed, spontaneity is perhaps the only good trait we miss in
studying his face. He was a thinker who had not yet found his purpose--a
thinker in leash, for at this time James Robertson could neither read
nor write.
At Watauga, Robertson lived for a while in the cabin of a man named
Honeycut. He chose land for himself and, in accordance with the custom
of the time, sealed his right to it by planting corn. He remained to
harvest his first crop and then set off to gather his family and some of
his friends together and escort them to the new country. But on the way
he missed the trail and wandered for a fortnight in the mountains. The
heavy rains ruined his powder so that he could not hunt; for food he had
only berries and nuts. At one place, where steep bluffs opposed him, he
was obliged to abandon his horse and scale the mountain side on foot. He
was in extremity when he chanced upon two huntsmen who gave him food and
set him on the trail. If this experience proves his lack of the hunter's
instinct and the woodsman's resourcefulness which Boone possessed, it
proves also his special qualities of perseverance and endurance which
were to reach their zenith in his successful struggle to colonize and
hold western Tennessee. He returned to Watauga in the following spring
(1771) with his family and a small group of colonists. Robertson's wife
was an educated woman and under her instruction he now began to study.
Next year a young Virginian from the Shenandoah Valley rode on down
Holston Valley on a hunting and exploring trip and loitered at Watauga.
Here he found not only a new settlement but an independent government in
the making; and forthwith he determined to have a part in both. This
young Virginian had already shown the inclination of a political
colonist, for in the Shenandoah Valley he had, at the age of nineteen,
laid out the town of New Market (which exists to this day) and had
directed its municipal affairs and invited and fostered its clergy. This
young Virginian--born on September 23, 1745, and so in 1772 twenty-seven
years of age--was John Sevier, that John Sevier whose monument now
towers from its site in Knoxville to testify of both the wild and the
great deeds of old Tennessee's beloved knight. Like Robertson, Sevier
hastened home and removed his whole family, including his wife and
children, his parents and his brothers and sisters, to this new haven of
freedom at Watauga.
The friendship formed between Robertson and Sevier in these first years
of their work together was never broken, yet two more opposite types
could hardly have been brought together. Robertson was a man of humble
origin, unlettered, not a dour Scot but a solemn one. Sevier was
cavalier as well as frontiersman. On his father's side he was of the
patrician family of Xavier in France. His progenitors, having become
Huguenots, had taken refuge in England, where the name Xavier was
finally changed to Sevier. John Sevier's mother was an Englishwoman.
Some years before his birth his parents had emigrated to the Shenandoah
Valley. Thus it happened that John Sevier, who mingled good English
blood with the blue blood of old France, was born an American and grew
up a frontier hunter and soldier. He stood about five feet nine from his
moccasins to his crown of light brown hair. He was well-proportioned and
as graceful of body as he was hard-muscled and swift. His chin was firm,
his nose of a Roman cast, his mouth well-shaped, its slightly full lips
slanting in a smile that would not be repressed. Under the high, finely
modeled brow, small keen dark blue eyes sparkled with health, with
intelligence, and with the man's joy in life.
John Sevier indeed cannot be listed as a type; he was individual. There
is no other character like him in border annals. He was cavalier and
prince in his leadership of men; he had their homage. Yet he knew how to
be comrade and brother to the lowliest. He won and held the confidence
and friendship of the serious-minded Robertson no less than the idolatry
of the wildest spirits on the frontier throughout the forty-three years
of the spectacular career which began for him on the day he brought his
tribe to Watauga. In his time he wore the governor's purple; and a
portrait painted of him shows how well this descendant of the noble
Xaviers could fit himself to the dignity and formal habiliments of
state; Yet in the fringed deerskin of frontier garb, he was fleeter on
the warpath than the Indians who fled before him; and he could outride
and outshoot--and, it is said, outswear--the best and the worst of the
men who followed him. Perhaps the lurking smile on John Sevier's face
was a flicker of mirth that there should be found any man, red or white,
with temerity enough to try conclusions with him. None ever did,
successfully.
The historians of Tennessee state that the Wataugans formed their
government in 1772 and that Sevier was one of its five commissioners.
Yet, as Sevier did not settle in Tennessee before 1773, it is possible
that the Watauga Association was not formed until then. Unhappily the
written constitution of the little commonwealth was not preserved; but
it is known that, following the Ulsterman's ideal, manhood suffrage and
religious independence were two of its provisions. The commissioners
enlisted a militia and they recorded deeds for land, issued marriage
licenses, and tried offenders against the law. They believed themselves
to be within the boundaries of Virginia and therefore adopted the laws
of that State for their guidance. They had numerous offenders to deal
with, for men fleeing from debt or from the consequence of crime sought
the new settlements just across the mountains as a safe and adjacent
harbor. The attempt of these men to pursue their lawlessness in Watauga
was one reason why the Wataugans organized a government.
When the line was run between Virginia and North Carolina beyond
the mountains, Watauga was discovered to be south of Virginia's limits
and hence on Indian lands. This was in conflict with the King's
Proclamation, and Alexander Cameron, British agent to the Cherokees,
accordingly ordered the encroaching settlers to depart. The Indians,
however, desired them to remain. But since it was illegal to purchase
Indian lands, Robertson negotiated a lease for ten years. In 1775, when
Henderson made his purchase from the Cherokees, at Sycamore Shoals on
the Watauga, Robertson and Sevier, who were present at the sale with
other Watauga commissioners, followed Henderson's example and bought
outright the lands they desired to include in Watauga's domain. In 1776
they petitioned North Carolina for "annexation." As they were already
within North Carolina's bounds, it was recognition rather than
annexation which they sought. This petition, which is the only Wataugan
document to survive, is undated but marked as received in August, 1776.
It is in Sevier's handwriting and its style suggests that it was
composed by him, for in its manner of expression it has much in common
with many later papers from his pen. That Wataugans were a law-loving
community and had formed their government for the purpose of making law
respected is reiterated throughout the document. As showing the quality
of these first western statemakers, two paragraphs are quoted:
Finding ourselves on the frontiers, and being apprehensive that for want
of proper legislature we might become a shelter for such as endeavored
to defraud their creditors; considering also the necessity of recording
deeds, wills, and doing other public business; we, by consent of the
people, formed a court for the purposes above mentioned, taking, by
desire of our constituents, the Virginia laws for our guide, so near as
the situation of affairs would permit. This was intended for ourselves,
and was done by consent of every individual.
The petition goes on to state that, among their measures for upholding
law, the Wataugans had enlisted "a company of fine riflemen" and put
them under command of "Captain James Robertson."
We... thought proper to station them on our frontiers in defense of the
common cause, at the expense and risque of our own private fortunes,
till farther public orders, which we flatter ourselves will give no
offense.... We pray your mature and deliberate consideration in our
behalf, that you may annex us to your Province (whether as county,
district, or other division) in such manner as may enable us to share in
the glorious cause of Liberty: enforce our laws under authority and in
every respect become the best members of society; and for ourselves and
our constituents we hope we may venture to assure you that we shall
adhere strictly to your determinations, and that nothing will be lacking
or anything neglected that may add weight (in the civil or military
establishments) to the glorious cause in which we are now struggling, or
contribute to the welfare of our own or ages yet to come.
One hundred and thirteen names are signed to the document. In the
following year (1777) North Carolina erected her overhill territory into
Washington County. The Governor appointed justices of the peace and
militia officers who in the following year organized the new county and
its courts. And so Watauga's independent government, begun in the spirit
of true liberty, came as lawfully to its end.
But for nearly three years before their political status was thus
determined, the Wataugans were sharing "in the glorious cause of
Liberty" by defending their settlements against Indian attacks. While
the majority of the young Cherokee warriors were among their enemies,
their chief battles were fought with those from the Chickamaugan towns
on the Tennessee River, under the leadership of Dragging Canoe. The
Chickamaugans embraced the more vicious and bloodthirsty Cherokees, with
a mixture of Creeks and bad whites, who, driven from every law-abiding
community, had cast in their lot with this tribe. The exact number of
white thieves and murderers who had found harbor in the Indian towns
during a score or more of years is not known; but the letters of the
Indian agents, preserved in the records, would indicate that there were
a good many of them. They were fit allies for Dragging Canoe; their
hatred of those from whom their own degeneracy had separated them was
not less than his.
In July, 1776, John Sevier wrote to the Virginia Committee as follows:
Dear Gentlemen: Isaac Thomas, William Falling, Jaret Williams and one
more have this moment come in by making their escape from the Indians
and say six hundred Indians and whites were to start for this fort and
intend to drive the country up to New River before they return.
Thus was heralded the beginning of a savage warfare which kept the
borderers engaged for years.
It has been a tradition of the chroniclers that Isaac Thomas received a
timely warning from Nancy Ward, a half-caste Cherokee prophetess who
often showed her good will towards the whites; and that the Indians were
roused to battle by Alexander Cameron and John Stuart, the British
agents or superintendents among the overhill tribes. There was a letter
bearing Cameron's name stating that fifteen hundred savages from the
Cherokee and Creek nations were to join with British troops landed at
Pensacola in an expedition against the southern frontier colonies. This
letter was brought to Watauga at dead of night by a masked man who
slipped it through a window and rode away. Apparently John Sevier did
not believe the military information contained in the mysterious
missive, for he communicated nothing of it to the Virginia Committee. In
recent years the facts have come to light. This mysterious letter and
others of a similar tenor bearing forged signatures are cited in a
report by the British Agent, John Stuart, to his Government. It appears
that such inflammatory missives had been industriously scattered through
the back settlements of both Carolinas. There are also letters from
Stuart to Lord Dartmouth, dated a year earlier, urging that something be
done immediately to counteract rumors set afloat that the British were
endeavoring to instigate both the Indians and the negroes to attack the
Americans.
Now it is, of course, an established fact that both the British and the
American armies used Indians in the War of Independence, even as both
together had used them against the French and the Spanish and their
allied Indians. It was inevitable that the Indians should participate in
any severe conflict between the whites. They were a numerous and a
warlike people and, from their point of view, they had more at stake
than the alien whites who were contesting for control of the red man's
continent. Both British and Americans have been blamed for "half-hearted
attempts to keep the Indians neutral." The truth is that each side
strove to enlist the Indians--to be used, if needed later, as warriors.
Massacre was no part of this policy, though it may have been
countenanced by individual officers in both camps. But it is obvious
that, once the Indians took the warpath, they were to be restrained by
no power and, no matter under whose nominal command, they would carry on
warfare by their own methods. ¹
¹ "There is little doubt that either side, British or Americans, stood
ready to enlist the Indians. Already before Boston the Americans had had
the help of the Stockbridge tribe. Washington found the service
committed to the practise when he arrived at Cambridge early in July.
Dunmore had taken the initiative in securing such allies, at least is
purpose; but the insurgent Virginians had had of late more direct
contact with the tribes and were now striving to secure them but with
little success." The Westward Movement, by Justin Winsor, p. 87.
General Ethan Allen of Vermont, as his letters show, sent emissaries
into Canada in an endeavor to enlist the French Canadians and the
Canadian Indians against the British in Canada. See American Archives,
Fourth Series, vol. II, p. 714. The British General Gage wrote to Lord
Dartmouth from Boston, June 12, 1775: "We need not be tender of calling
on the Savages as the rebels have shown us the example, by bringing as
many Indians down against us as they could collect." American Archives,
Fourth Series, vol. ii, p. 967.
In a letter to Lord Germain, dated August 23, 1776, John Stuart wrote:
"Although Mr. Cameron was in constant danger of assassination and the
Indians were threatened with invasion should they dare to protect him,
yet he still found means to prevent their falling on the settlement."
See North Carolina Colonial Records, vol. X, pp. 608 and 763. Proof that
the British agents had succeeded in keeping the Cherokee neutral till
the summer of 1776 is found in the instructions, dated the 7th of July,
to Major Winston from President Rutledge of South Carolina, regarding
the Cherokees, that they must be forced to give up the British agents
and "instead of remaining in a State of Neutrality with respect to
British Forces they must take part with us against them." See North
Carolina Colonial Records, vol. X, p. 658.
Whatever may have been the case elsewhere, the attacks on the Watauga
and Holston settlements were not instigated by British agents. It was
not Nancy Ward but Henry Stuart, John Stuart's deputy, who sent Isaac
Thomas to warn the settlers. In their efforts to keep the friendship of
the red men, the British and the Americans were providing them with
powder and lead. The Indians had run short of ammunition and, since
hunting was their only means of livelihood, they must shoot or starve.
South Carolina sent the Cherokees a large supply of powder and lead
which was captured en route by Tories. About the same time Henry Stuart
set out from Pensacola with another consignment from the British. His
report to Lord Germain of his arrival in the Chickamaugan towns and of
what took place there just prior to the raids on the Tennessee
settlements is one of the most illuminating as well as one of the most
dramatic papers in the collected records of that time. ¹
¹ North Carolina Colonial Records, vol. X, pp. 763-785.
Stuart's first act was secretly to send out Thomas, the trader, to warn
the settlers of their peril, for a small war party of braves was even
then concluding the preliminary war ceremonies. The reason for this
Indian alarm and projected excursion was the fact that the settlers had
built one fort at least on the Indian lands. Stuart finally persuaded
the Indians to remain at peace until he could write to the settlers
stating the grievances and asking for negotiations. The letters were to
be carried by Thomas on his return.
But no sooner was Thomas on his way again with the letters than there
arrived a deputation of warriors from the Northern tribes--from "the
Confederate nations, the Mohawks, Ottawas, Nantucas, Shawanoes and
Delawares"--fourteen men in all, who entered the council hall of the Old
Beloved Town of Chota with their faces painted black and the war belt
carried before them. They said that they had been seventy days on their
journey. Everywhere along their way they had seen houses and forts
springing up like weeds across the green sod of their hunting lands.
Where once were great herds of deer and buffalo, they had watched
thousands of men at arms preparing for war. So many now were the white
warriors and their women and children that the red men had been obliged
to travel a great way on the other side of the Ohio and to make a detour
of nearly three hundred miles to avoid being seen. Even on this outlying
route they had crossed the fresh tracks of a great body of people with
horses and cattle going still further towards the setting sun. But their
cries were not to be in vain; for "their fathers, the French" had heard
them and had promised to aid them if they would now strike as one for
their lands.
After this preamble the deputy of the Mohawks rose. He said that some
American people had made war on one of their towns and had seized the
son of their Great Beloved Man, Sir William Johnson, imprisoned him, and
put him to a cruel death; this crime demanded a great vengeance and they
would not cease until they had taken it. One after another the fourteen
delegates rose and made their "talks" and presented their wampum strings
to Dragging Canoe. The last to speak was a chief of the Shawanoes. He
also declared that "their fathers, the French," who had been so long
dead, were "alive again," that they had supplied them plentifully with
arms and ammunition and had promised to assist them in driving out the
Americans and in reclaiming their country. Now all the Northern tribes
were joined in one for this great purpose; and they themselves were on
their way to all the Southern tribes and had resolved that, if any tribe
refused to join, they would fall upon and extirpate that tribe, after
having overcome the whites. At the conclusion of his oration the
Shawanoe presented the war belt--nine feet of six-inch wide purple
wampum spattered with vermilion--to Dragging Canoe, who held it extended
between his two hands, in silence, and waited. Presently rose a headman
whose wife had been a member of Sir William Johnson's household. He laid
his hand on the belt and sang the war song. One by one, then, chiefs and
warriors rose, laid hold of the great belt and chanted the war song.
Only the older men, made wise by many defeats, sat still in their
places, mute and dejected. "After that day every young fellow's face in
the overhills towns appeared blackened and nothing was now talked of but
war."
Stuart reports that "all the white men" in the tribe also laid hands on
the belt. Dragging Canoe then demanded that Cameron and Stuart come
forward and take hold of the war belt--"which we refused." Despite the
offense their refusal gave--and it would seem a dangerous time to give
such offense--Cameron delivered a "strong talk" for peace, warning the
Cherokees of what must surely be the end of the rashness they
contemplated. Stuart informed the chief that if the Indians persisted in
attacking the settlements with out waiting for answers to his letters,
he would not remain with them any longer or bring them any more
ammunition. He went to his house and made ready to leave on the
following day. Early the next morning Dragging Canoe appeared at his
door and told him that the Indians were now very angry about the letters
he had written, which could only have put the settlers on their guard;
and that if any white man attempted to leave the nation "they had
determined to follow him but not to bring him back." Dragging Canoe had
painted his face black to carry this message. Thomas now returned with
an answer from "the West Fincastle men," which was so unsatisfactory to
the tribe that war ceremonies were immediately begun. Stuart and Cameron
could no longer influence the Indians. "All that could now be done was
to give them strict charge not to pass the Boundary Line, not to injure
any of the King's faithful subjects, not to Kill any women and
children"; and to threaten to "stop all ammunition" if they did not obey
these orders.
The major part of the Watauga militia went out to meet the Indians and
defeated a large advance force at Long Island Flats on the Holston. The
Watauga fort, where many of the settlers had taken refuge, contained
forty fighting men under Robertson and Sevier. As Indians usually
retreated and waited for a while after a defeat, those within the fort
took it for granted that no immediate attack was to be expected; and the
women went out at daybreak into the fields to milk the cows. Suddenly
the war whoop shrilled from the edge of the clearing. Red warriors
leaped from the green skirting of the forest. The women ran for the
fort. Quickly the heavy gates swung to and the dropped bar secured them.
Only then did the watchmen discover that one woman had been shut out.
She was a young woman nearing her twenties and, if legend has reported
her truly, "Bonnie Kate Sherrill" was a beauty. Through a porthole
Sevier saw her running towards the shut gates, dodging and darting, her
brown hair blowing from the wind of her race for life--and offering far
too rich a prize to the yelling fiends who dashed after her. Sevier
coolly shot the foremost of her pursuers, then sprang upon the wall,
caught up Bonnie Kate, and tossed her inside to safety. And legend says
further that when, after Sevier's brief widowerhood, she became his
wife, four years later, Bonnie Kate was wont to say that she would be
willing to run another such race any day to have another such
introduction!
There were no casualties within the fort and, after three hours, the foe
withdrew, leaving several of their warriors slain.
In the excursions against the Indians which followed this opening of
hostilities Sevier won his first fame as an "Indian fighter"--the fame
later crystallized in the phrase "thirty-five battles, thirty-five
victories." His method was to take a very small company of the hardiest
and swiftest horsemen--men who could keep their seat and endurance, and
horses that could keep their feet and their speed, on any steep of the
mountains no matter how tangled and rough the going might be--swoop down
upon war camp, or town, and go through it with rifle and hatchet and
fire, then dash homeward at the same pace before the enemy had begun to
consider whether to follow him or not. In all his "thirty-five battles"
it is said he lost not more than fifty men.
The Cherokees made peace in 1777, after about a year of almost
continuous warfare, the treaty being concluded on their side by the old
chiefs who had never countenanced the war. Dragging Canoe refused to
take part, but he was rendered innocuous for the time being by the
destruction of several of the Chickamaugan villages. James Robertson now
went to Chota as Indian agent for North Carolina. So fast was population
growing, owing to the opening of a wagon road into Burke County, North
Carolina, that Washington County was divided. John Sevier became Colonel
of Washington and Isaac Shelby Colonel of the newly erected Sullivan
County. Jonesborough, the oldest town in Tennessee, was laid out as the
county seat of Washington; and in the same year (1778) Sevier moved to
the bank of the Nolichucky River, so-called after the Indian name of
this dashing sparkling stream, meaning rapid or precipitous. Thus the
nickname given John Sevier by his devotees had a dual application. He
was well called Nolichucky Jack.
When Virginia annulled Richard Henderson's immense purchase but allowed
him a large tract on the Cumberland, she by no means discouraged that
intrepid pioneer. Henderson's tenure of Kentucky had been brief, but not
unprofitable in experience. He had learned that colonies must be treated
with less commercial pressure and with more regard to individual
liberty, if they were to be held loyal either to a King beyond the water
or to an uncrowned leader nearer at hand. He had been making his plans
for colonization of that portion of the Transylvania purchase which lay
within the bounds of North Carolina along the Cumberland and choosing
his men to lay the foundations of his projected settlement in what was
then a wholly uninhabited country; and he had decided on generous terms,
such as ten dollars a thousand acres for land, the certificate of
purchase to entitle the holder to further proceedings in the land office
without extra fees.
To head an enterprise of such danger and hardship Henderson required a
man of more than mere courage; a man of resource, of stability, of
proven powers, one whom other men would follow and obey with confidence.
So it was that James Robertson was chosen to lead the first white
settlers into middle Tennessee. He set out in February, 1779,
accompanied by his brother, Mark Robertson, several other white men, and
a negro, to select a site for settlement and to plant corn. Meanwhile
another small party led by Gaspar Mansker had arrived. As the boundary
line between Virginia and North Carolina had not been run to this point,
Robertson believed that the site he had chosen lay within Virginia and
was in the disposal of General Clark. To protect the settlers,
therefore, he journeyed into the Illinois country to purchase cabin
rights from Clark, but there he was evidently convinced that the site on
the Cumberland would be found to lie within North Carolina. He returned
to Watauga to lead a party of settlers into the new territory, towards
which they set out in October. After crossing the mountain chain through
Cumberland Gap, the party followed Boone's road--the Warriors' Path--for
some distance and then made their own trail southwestward through the
wilderness to the bluffs on the Cumberland, where they built cabins to
house them against one of the coldest winters ever experienced in that
county. So were laid the first foundations of the present city of
Nashville, at first named Nashborough by Robertson. ¹ On the way,
Robertson had fallen in with a party of men and families bound for
Kentucky and had persuaded them to accompany his little band to the
Cumberland. Robertson's own wife and children, as well as the families
of his party, had been left to follow in the second expedition, which
was to be made by water under the command of Captain John Donelson.
¹ In honor of General Francis Nash, of North Carolina, who was mortally
wounded at Germantown, 1777.
The little fleet of boats containing the settlers, their families, and
all their household goods, was to start from Fort Patrick Henry, near
Long Island in the Holston River, to float down into the Tennessee and
along the 652 miles of that widely wandering stream to the Ohio, and
then to proceed up the Ohio to the mouth of the Cumberland and up the
Cumberland until Robertson's station should appear--a journey, as it
turned out, of some nine hundred miles through unknown country and on
waters at any rate for the greater part never before navigated by white
men.
Journal of a voyage, intended by God's permission, in the good boat
Adventure is the title of the log book in which Captain Donelson entered
the events of the four months' journey. Only a few pages endured to be
put into print: but those few tell a tale of hazard and courage that
seems complete. Could a lengthier narrative, even if enriched with
literary art and fancy, bring before us more vividly than do the simple
entries of Donelson's log the spirit of the men and the women who won
the West? If so little personal detail is recorded of the pioneer men of
that day that we must deduce what they were from what they did, what do
we know of their unfailing comrades, the pioneer women? Only that they
were there and that they shared in every test of courage and endurance,
save the march of troops and the hunt. Donelson's Journal therefore has
a special value, because in its terse account of Mrs. Jennings and Mrs.
Peyton it depicts unforgettably the quality of pioneer womanhood. ¹
¹ This Journal is printed in Ramsey's Annals of Tennessee.
December 22nd, 1779. Took our departure from the fort and fell down the
river to the mouth of Reedy Creek where we were stopped by the fall of
water and most excessive hard frost.
Perhaps part of the Journal was lost, or perhaps the "excessive hard
frost" of that severe winter, when it is said even droves of wild game
perished, prevented the boats from going on, for the next entry is dated
the 27th of February. On this date the Adventure and two other boats
grounded and lay on the shoals all that afternoon and the succeeding
night "in much distress."
March 2nd. Rain about half the day.... Mr. Henry's boat being driven on
the point of an island by the force of the current was sunk, the whole
cargo much damaged and the crew's lives much endangered, which
occasioned the whole fleet to put on shore and go to their
assistance....
Monday 6th. Got under way before sunrise; the morning proving very
foggy, many of the fleet were much bogged--about 10 o'clock lay by for
them; when collected, proceeded down. Camped on the north shore, where
Captain Hutching's negro man died, being much frosted in his feet and
legs, of which he died.
Tuesday, 7th. Got under way very early; the day proving very windy, a S.
S. W., and the river being wide occasioned a high sea, insomuch that
some of the smaller crafts were in danger; therefore came to at the
uppermost Chiccamauga town, which was then evacuated, where we lay by
that afternoon and camped that night. The wife of Ephraim Peyton was
here delivered of a child. Mr. Peyton has gone through by land with
Captain Robertson.
Wednesday 8th... proceed down to an Indian village which was
inhabited... they insisted on us to come ashore, called us brothers, and
showed other signs of friendship.... And here we must regret the
unfortunate death of young Mr. Payne, on board Captain Blakemore's boat,
who was mortally wounded by reason of the boat running too near the
northern shore opposite the town, where some of the enemy lay concealed;
and the more tragical misfortune of poor Stuart, his family and friends,
to the number of twenty-eight persons. This man had embarked with us for
the Western country, but his family being diseased with the small pox,
it was agreed upon between him and the company that he should keep at
some distance in the rear, for fear of the infection spreading, and he
was warned each night when the encampment should take place by the sound
of a horn.... The Indians having now collected to a considerable number,
observing his helpless situation singled off from the rest of the fleet,
intercepted him and killed and took prisoners the whole crew...; their
cries were distinctly heard....
After describing a running fight with Indians stationed on the bluffs on
both shores where the river narrowed to half its width and boiled
through a canyon, the entry for the day concludes: "Jennings's boat is
missing."
Friday 10th. This morning about 4 o'clock we were surprised by the cries
of "help poor Jennings" at some distance in the rear. He had discovered
us by our fires and came up in the most wretched condition. He states
that as soon as the Indians discovered his situation [his boat had run
on a rock] they turned their whole attention to him and kept up a most
galling fire at his boat. He ordered his wife, a son nearly grown, a
young man who accompanies them and his negro man and woman, to throw all
his goods into the river to lighten their boat for the purpose of
getting her off; himself returning their fire as well as he could, being
a good soldier and an excellent marksman. But before they had
accomplished their object, his son, the young man and the negro, jumped
out of the boat and left.... Mrs. Jennings, however, and the negro
woman, succeeded in unloading the boat, but chiefly by the exertions of
Mrs. Jennings who got out of the boat and shoved her off, but was near
falling a victim to her own intrepidity on account of the boat starting
so suddenly as soon as loosened from the rock. Upon examination he
appears to have made a wonderful escape for his boat is pierced in
numberless places with bullets. It is to be remarked that Mrs. Peyton,
who was the night before delivered of an infant, which was unfortunately
killed upon the hurry and confusion consequent upon such a disaster,
assisted them, being frequently exposed to wet and cold.... Their
clothes were very much cut with bullets, especially Mrs. Jennings's.
Of the three men who deserted, while the women stood by under fire, the
negro was drowned and Jennings's son and the other young man were
captured by the Chickamaugans. The latter was burned at the stake. Young
Jennings was to have shared the same fate; but a trader in the village,
learning that the boy was known to John Sevier, ransomed him by a large
payment of goods, as a return for an act of kindness Sevier had once
done to him.
Sunday 12th.... After running until about 10 o'clock came in sight of
the Muscle Shoals. Halted on the northern shore at the appearance of the
shoals, in order to search for the signs Captain James Robertson was to
make for us at that place... that it was practicable for us to go across
by land... we can find none--from which we conclude that it would not be
prudent to make the attempt and are determined, knowing ourselves in
such imminent danger, to pursue our journey down the river.... When we
approached them [the Shoals] they had a dreadful appearance.... The
water being high made a terrible roaring, which could be heard at some
distance, among the driftwood heaped frightfully upon the points of the
islands, the current running in every possible direction. Here we did
not know how soon we should be dashed to pieces and all our troubles
ended at once. Our boats frequently dragged on the bottom and appeared
constantly in danger of striking. They warped as much as in a rough sea.
But by the hand of Providence we are now preserved from this danger
also. I know not the length of this wonderful shoal; it had been
represented to me to be twenty-five or thirty miles. If so, we must have
descended very rapidly, as indeed we did, for we passed it in about
three hours.
On the twentieth the little fleet arrived at the mouth of the Tennessee
and the voyagers landed on the bank of the Ohio.
Our situation here is truly disagreeable. The river is very high and the
current rapid, our boats not constructed for the purpose of stemming a
rapid stream, our provisions exhausted, the crews almost worn down with
hunger and fatigue, and know not what distance we have to go or what
time it will take us to our place of destination. The scene is rendered
still more melancholy as several boats will not attempt to ascend the
rapid current. Some intend to descend the Mississippi to Natchez; others
are bound for the Illinois--among the rest my son-in-law and daughter.
We now part, perhaps to meet no more, for I am determined to pursue my
course, happen what will.
Tuesday 21st. Set out and on this day labored very hard and got but
little way.... Passed the two following days as the former, suffering
much from hunger and fatigue.
Friday 24th. About three o'clock came to the mouth of a river which I
thought was the Cumberland. Some of the company declared it could not
be--it was so much smaller than was expected.... We determined however
to make the trial, pushed up some distance and encamped for the night.
Saturday 25th. Today we are much encouraged; the river grows wider;...
we are now convinced it is the Cumberland....
Sunday 26th... procured some buffalo meat; though poor it was palatable.
Friday 31st... met with Colonel Richard Henderson, who is running the
line between Virginia and North Carolina. At this meeting we were much
rejoiced. He gave us every information we wished, and further informed
us that he had purchased a quantity of corn in Kentucky, to be shipped
at the Falls of Ohio for the use of the Cumberland settlement. We are
now without bread and are compelled to hunt the buffalo to preserve
life....
Monday, April 24th. This day we arrived at our journey's end at the Big
Salt Lick, where we have the pleasure of finding Captain Robertson and
his company. It is a source of satisfaction to us to be enabled to
restore to him and others their families and friends, who were entrusted
to our care, and who, sometime since, perhaps, despaired of ever meeting
again....
Past the camps of the Chickamaugans--who were retreating farther and
farther down the twisting flood, seeking a last standing ground in the
giant caves by the Tennessee--these white voyagers had steered their
pirogues. Near Robertson's station, where they landed after having
traversed the triangle of the three great rivers which enclose the
larger part of western Tennessee, stood a crumbling trading house
marking the defeat of a Frenchman who had, one time, sailed in from the
Ohio to establish an outpost of his nation there. At a little distance
were the ruins of a rude fort cast up by the Cherokees in the days when
the redoubtable Chickasaws had driven them from the pleasant shores of
the western waters. Under the towering forest growth lay vast burial
mounds and the sunken foundations of walled towns, telling of a departed
race which had once flashed its rude paddles and had its dream of
permanence along the courses of these great waterways. Now another tribe
had come to dream that dream anew. Already its primitive keels had
traced the opening lines of its history on the face of the immemorial
rivers.