SEVIER, ROBERTSON, AND THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH, 1769-1774.
Soon after the successful ending of the last colonial struggle with
France, and the conquest of Canada, the British king issued a
proclamation forbidding the English colonists from trespassing on Indian
grounds, or moving west of the mountains. But in 1768, at the treaty of
Fort Stanwix, the Six Nations agreed to surrender to the English all the
lands lying between the Ohio and the Tennessee;[1] and this treaty was
at once seized upon by the backwoodsmen as offering an excuse for
settling beyond the mountains. However, the Iroquois had ceded lands to
which they had no more right than a score or more other Indian tribes;
and these latter, not having been consulted, felt at perfect liberty to
make war on the intruders. In point of fact, no one tribe or set of
tribes could cede Kentucky or Tennessee, because no one tribe or set of
tribes owned either. The great hunting-grounds between the Ohio and the
Tennessee formed a debatable land, claimed by every tribe that could
hold its own against its rivals.[2]
The eastern part of what is now Tennessee consists of a great
hill-strewn, forest-clad valley, running from northeast to southwest,
bounded on one side by the Cumberland, and on the other by the Great
Smoky and Unaka Mountains; the latter separating it from North Carolina.
In this valley arise and end the Clinch, the Holston, the Watauga, the
Nolichucky, the French Broad, and the other streams, whose combined
volume makes the Tennessee River. The upper end of the valley lies in
southwestern Virginia, the head-waters of some of the rivers being well
within that State; and though the province was really part of North
Carolina, it was separated therefrom by high mountain chains, while from
Virginia it was easy to follow the watercourses down the valley. Thus,
as elsewhere among the mountains forming the western frontier, the first
movements of population went parallel with, rather than across, the
ranges. As in western Virginia the first settlers came, for the most
part, from Pennsylvania, so, in turn, in what was then western North
Carolina, and is now eastern Tennessee, the first settlers came mainly
from Virginia, and, indeed, in great part, from this same Pennsylvanian
stock.[3] Of course, in each case there was also a very considerable
movement directly westward.[4] They were a sturdy race, enterprising and
intelligent, fond of the strong excitement inherent in the adventurous
frontier life. Their untamed and turbulent passions, and the lawless
freedom of their lives, made them a population very productive of wild,
headstrong characters; yet, as a whole, they were a God-fearing race, as
was but natural in those who sprang from the loins of the Irish
Calvinists. Their preachers, all Presbyterians, followed close behind
the first settlers, and shared their toil and dangers; they tilled their
fields rifle in hand, and fought the Indians valorously. They felt that
they were dispossessing the Canaanites, and were thus working the Lord's
will in preparing the land for a race which they believed was more truly
His chosen people than was that nation which Joshua led across the
Jordan. They exhorted no less earnestly in the bare meeting-houses on
Sunday, because their hands were roughened with guiding the plow and
wielding the axe on week-days; for they did not believe that being
called to preach the word of God absolved them from earning their living
by the sweat of their brows. The women, the wives of the settlers, were
of the same iron temper. They fearlessly fronted every danger the men
did, and they worked quite as hard. They prized the knowledge and
learning they themselves had been forced to do without; and many a
backwoods woman by thrift and industry, by the sale of her butter and
cheese, and the calves from her cows, enabled her husband to give his
sons good schooling, and perhaps to provide for some favored member of
the family the opportunity to secure a really first-class education.[5]
The valley in which these splendid pioneers of our people settled, lay
directly in the track of the Indian marauding parties, for the great war
trail used by the Cherokees and by their northern foes ran along its
whole length. This war trail, or war trace as it was then called, was in
places very distinct, although apparently never as well marked as were
some of the buffalo trails. It sent off a branch to Cumberland Gap,
whence it ran directly north through Kentucky to the Ohio, being there
known as the warriors' path. Along these trails the northern and
southern Indians passed and re-passed when they went to war against each
other; and of course they were ready and eager to attack any white man
who might settle down along their course.
In 1769, the year that Boon first went to Kentucky, the first permanent
settlers came to the banks of the Watauga,[6] the settlement being
merely an enlargement of the Virginia settlement, which had for a short
time existed on the head-waters of the Holston, especially near Wolf
Hills.[7] At first the settlers thought they were still in the domain of
Virginia, for at that time the line marking her southern boundary had
not been run so far west.[8] Indeed, had they not considered the land as
belonging to Virginia, they would probably not at the moment have dared
to intrude farther on territory claimed by the Indians. But while the
treaty between the crown and the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix[9] had
resulted in the cession of whatever right the Six Nations had to the
southwestern territory, another treaty was concluded about the same
time[10] with the Cherokees, by which the latter agreed to surrender
their claims to a small portion of this country, though as a matter of
fact before the treaty was signed white settlers had crowded beyond the
limits allowed them. These two treaties, in the first of which one set
of tribes surrendered a small portion of land, while in the second an
entirely different confederacy surrendered a larger tract, which,
however, included part of the first cession, are sufficient to show the
absolute confusion of the Indian land titles.
But in 1771, one of the new-comers,[11] who was a practical surveyor,
ran out the Virginia boundary line some distance to the westward, and
discovered that the Watauga settlement came within the limits of North
Carolina. Hitherto the settlers had supposed that they themselves were
governed by the Virginian law, and that their rights as against the
Indians were guaranteed by the Virginian government; but this discovery
threw them back upon their own resources. They suddenly found themselves
obliged to organize a civil government, under which they themselves
should live, and at the same time to enter into a treaty on their own
account with the neighboring Indians, to whom the land they were on
apparently belonged.
The first need was even more pressing than the second. North Carolina
was always a turbulent and disorderly colony, unable to enforce law and
justice even in the long-settled districts; so that it was wholly out of
the question to appeal to her for aid in governing a remote and outlying
community. Moreover, about the time that the Watauga commonwealth was
founded, the troubles in North Carolina came to a head. Open war ensued
between the adherents of the royal governor, Tryon, on the one hand, and
the Regulators, as the insurgents styled themselves, on the other, the
struggle ending with the overthrow of the Regulators at the battle of
the Alamance.[12]
As a consequence of these troubles, many people from the back counties
of North Carolina crossed the mountains, and took up their abode among
the pioneers on the Watauga[13] and upper Holston; the beautiful valley
of the Nolichucky soon receiving its share of this stream of
immigration. Among the first comers were many members of the class of
desperate adventurers always to be found hanging round the outskirts of
frontier civilization. Horse-thieves, murderers, escaped bond-servants,
runaway debtors--all, in fleeing from the law, sought to find a secure
asylum in the wilderness. The brutal and lawless wickedness of these
men, whose uncouth and raw savagery was almost more repulsive than that
of city criminals, made it imperative upon the decent members of the
community to unite for self-protection. The desperadoes were often mere
human beasts of prey; they plundered whites and Indians impartially.
They not only by their thefts and murders exasperated the Indians into
retaliating on innocent whites, but, on the other hand, they also often
deserted their own color and went to live among the redskins, becoming
their leaders in the worst outrages.[14]
But the bulk of the settlers were men of sterling worth; fit to be the
pioneer fathers of a mighty and beautiful state. They possessed the
courage that enabled them to defy outside foes, together with the rough,
practical commonsense that allowed them to establish a simple but
effective form of government, so as to preserve order among themselves.
To succeed in the wilderness, it was necessary to possess not only
daring, but also patience and the capacity to endure grinding toil. The
pioneers were hunters and husbandmen. Each, by the aid of axe and brand,
cleared his patch of corn land in the forest, close to some clear,
swift-flowing stream, and by his skill with the rifle won from canebrake
and woodland the game on which his family lived until the first crop was
grown.
A few of the more reckless and foolhardy, and more especially of those
who were either merely hunters and not farmers, or else who were of
doubtful character, lived entirely by themselves; but, as a rule, each
knot of settlers was gathered together into a little stockaded hamlet,
called a fort or station. This system of defensive villages was very
distinctive of pioneer backwoods life, and was unique of its kind;
without it the settlement of the west and southwest would have been
indefinitely postponed. In no other way could the settlers have combined
for defence, while yet retaining their individual ownership of the land.
The Watauga forts or palisaded villages were of the usual kind, the
cabins and blockhouses connected by a heavy loop-holed picket. They were
admirably adapted for defence with the rifle. As there was no moat,
there was a certain danger from an attack with fire unless water was
stored within; and it was of course necessary to guard carefully against
surprise. But to open assault they were practically impregnable, and
they therefore offered a sure haven of refuge to the settlers in case of
an Indian inroad. In time of peace, the inhabitants moved out, to live
in their isolated log-cabins and till the stump-dotted clearings. Trails
led through the dark forests from one station to another, as well as to
the settled districts beyond the mountains; and at long intervals men
drove along them bands of pack-horses, laden with the few indispensable
necessaries the settlers could not procure by their own labor. The
pack-horse was the first, and for a long time the only, method of
carrying on trade in the backwoods; and the business of the packer was
one of the leading frontier industries.
The settlers worked hard and hunted hard, and lived both plainly and
roughly. Their cabins were roofed with clapboards, or huge shingles,
split from the log with maul and wedge, and held in place by heavy
stones, or by poles; the floors were made of rived puncheons, hewn
smooth on one surface; the chimney was outside the hut, made of rock
when possible, otherwise of logs thickly plastered with clay that was
strengthened with hogs' bristles or deer hair; in the great fire-place
was a tongue on which to hang pot-hooks and kettle; the unglazed window
had a wooden shutter, and the door was made of great clapboards.[15] The
men made their own harness, farming implements, and domestic utensils;
and, as in every other community still living in the heroic age, the
smith was a person of the utmost importance. There was but one thing
that all could have in any quantity, and that was land; each had all of
this he wanted for the taking,--or if it was known to belong to the
Indians, he got its use for a few trinkets or a flask of whisky. A few
of the settlers still kept some of the Presbyterian austerity of
character, as regards amusements; but, as a rule, they were fond of
horse-racing, drinking, dancing, and fiddling. The corn-shuckings,
flax-pullings, log-rollings (when the felled timber was rolled off the
clearings), house-raisings, maple-sugar-boilings, and the like were
scenes of boisterous and light-hearted merriment, to which the whole
neighborhood came, for it was accounted an insult if a man was not asked
in to help on such occasions, and none but a base churl would refuse his
assistance. The backwoods people had to front peril and hardship without
stint, and they loved for the moment to leap out of the bounds of their
narrow lives and taste the coarse pleasures that are always dear to a
strong, simple, and primitive race. Yet underneath their moodiness and
their fitful light-heartedness lay a spirit that when roused was
terrible in its ruthless and stern intensity of purpose.
Such were the settlers of the Watauga, the founders of the commonwealth
that grew into the State of Tennessee, who early in 1772 decided that
they must form some kind of government that would put down wrong-doing
and work equity between man and man. Two of their number already towered
head and shoulders above the rest in importance and merit especial
mention; for they were destined for the next thirty years to play the
chief parts in the history of that portion of the Southwest which
largely through their own efforts became the State of Tennessee. These
two men, neither of them yet thirty years of age, were John Sevier and
James Robertson.[16]
Robertson first came to the Watauga early in 1770.[17] He had then been
married for two years, and had been "learning his letters and to spell"
from his well-educated wife; for he belonged to a backwoods family, even
poorer than the average, and he had not so much as received the
rudimentary education that could be acquired at an "old-field" school.
But he was a man of remarkable natural powers, above the medium
height,[18] with wiry, robust form, light-blue eyes, fair complexion,
and dark hair; his somewhat sombre face had in it a look of
self-contained strength that made it impressive; and his taciturn,
quiet, masterful way of dealing with men and affairs, together with his
singular mixture of cool caution and most adventurous daring, gave him
an immediate hold even upon such lawless spirits as those of the border.
He was a mighty hunter; but, unlike Boon, hunting and exploration were
to him secondary affairs, and he came to examine the lands with the eye
of a pioneer settler. He intended to have a home where he could bring up
his family, and, if possible, he wished to find rich lands, with good
springs, whereto he might lead those of his neighbors who, like himself,
eagerly desired to rise in the world, and to provide for the well-being
of their children.
To find such a country Robertson, then dwelling in North Carolina,
decided to go across the mountains. He started off alone on his
exploring expedition, rifle in hand, and a good horse under him. He
crossed the ranges that continue northward the Great Smokies, and spent
the summer in the beautiful hill country where the springs of the
western waters flowed from the ground. He had never seen so lovely a
land. The high valleys, through which the currents ran, were hemmed in
by towering mountain walls, with cloud-capped peaks. The fertile loam
forming the bottoms was densely covered with the growth of the primaeval
forest, broken here and there by glade-like openings, where herds of
game grazed on the tall, thick grass.
Robertson was well treated by the few settlers, and stayed long enough
to raise a crop of corn, the stand-by of the backwoods pioneer; like
every other hunter, explorer, Indian fighter, and wilderness wanderer,
he lived on the game he shot, and the small quantity of maize he was
able to carry with him.[19] In the late fall, however, when recrossing
the mountain on his way home through the trackless forests, both game
and corn failed him. He lost his way, was forced to abandon his horse
among impassable precipices, and finally found his rifle useless owing
to the powder having become soaked. For fourteen days he lived almost
wholly on nuts and wild berries, and was on the point of death from
starvation, when he met two hunters on horseback, who fed him and let
him ride their horses by turns, and brought him safely to his home.
Such hardships were little more than matter-of-course incidents in a
life like his; and he at once prepared to set out with his family for
the new land. His accounts greatly excited his neighbors, and sixteen
families made ready to accompany him. The little caravan started, under
Robertson's guidance, as soon as the ground had dried after the winter
rains in the spring of 1771.[20] They travelled in the usual style of
backwoods emigrants: the men on foot, rifle on shoulder, the elder
children driving the lean cows, while the women, the young children, and
the few household goods, and implements of husbandry, were carried on
the backs of the pack-horses; for in settling the backwoods during the
last century, the pack-horse played the same part that in the present
century was taken by the canvas-covered emigrant wagon, the white-topped
"prairie schooner."
Once arrived at the Watauga, the Carolina new-comers mixed readily with
the few Virginians already on the ground; and Robertson speedily became
one of the leading men in the little settlement. On an island in the
river he built a house of logs with the bark still on them on the
outside, though hewed smooth within; tradition says that it was the
largest in the settlement. Certainly it belonged to the better class of
backwoods cabins, with a loft and several rooms, a roof of split
saplings, held down by weighty poles, a log veranda in front, and a huge
fire-place, of sticks or stones laid in clay, wherein the pile of
blazing logs roared loudly in cool weather. The furniture was probably
precisely like that in other houses of the class; a rude bed, table,
settee, and chest of drawers, a spinning-jenny, and either three-legged
stools or else chairs with backs and seats of undressed deer hides.
Robertson's energy and his remarkable natural ability brought him to the
front at once, in every way; although, as already said, he had much less
than even the average backwoods education, for he could not read when he
was married, while most of the frontiersmen could not only read but also
write, or at least sign their names.[21]
Sevier, who came to the Watauga early in 1772, nearly a year after
Robertson and his little colony had arrived, differed widely from his
friend in almost every respect save highmindedness and dauntless,
invincible courage. He was a gentleman by birth and breeding, the son of
a Huguenot who had settled in the Shenandoah Valley. He had received a
fair education, and though never fond of books, he was to the end of his
days an interested and intelligent observer of men and things, both in
America and Europe. He corresponded on intimate and equal terms with
Madison, Franklin, and others of our most polished statesmen; while
Robertson's letters, when he had finally learned to write them himself,
were almost as remarkable for their phenomenally bad spelling as for
their shrewd common-sense and homely, straightforward honesty. Sevier
was a very handsome man; during his lifetime he was reputed the
handsomest in Tennessee. He was tall, fair-skinned, blue-eyed,
brown-haired, of slender build, with erect, military carriage and
commanding bearing, his lithe, finely proportioned figure being well set
off by the hunting-shirt which he almost invariably wore. From his
French forefathers he inherited a gay, pleasure-loving temperament, that
made him the most charming of companions. His manners were polished and
easy, and he had great natural dignity. Over the backwoodsmen he
exercised an almost unbounded influence, due as much to his ready tact,
invariable courtesy, and lavish, generous hospitality, as to the skill
and dashing prowess which made him the most renowned Indian fighter of
the Southwest. He had an eager, impetuous nature, and was very
ambitious, being almost as fond of popularity as of Indian-fighting.[22]
He was already married, and the father of two children, when he came to
the Watauga, and, like Robertson, was seeking a new and better home for
his family in the west. So far, his life had been as uneventful as that
of any other spirited young borderer; his business had been that of a
frontier Indian trader; he had taken part in one or two unimportant
Indian skirmishes.[23] Later he was commissioned by Lord Dunmore as a
captain in the Virginia line.
Such were Sevier and Robertson, the leaders in the little frontier
outpost of civilization that was struggling to maintain itself on the
Watauga; and these two men afterwards proved themselves to be, with the
exception of George Rogers Clark, the greatest of the first generation
of Trans-Alleghany pioneers.
Their followers were worthy of them. All alike were keenly alive to the
disadvantages of living in a community where there was neither law nor
officer to enforce it. Accordingly, with their characteristic capacity
for combination, so striking as existing together with the equally
characteristic capacity for individual self-help, the settlers
determined to organize a government of their own. They promptly put
their resolution into effect early in the spring of 1772, Robertson
being apparently the leader in the movement.
They decided to adopt written articles of agreement, by which their
conduct should be governed; and these were known as the Articles of the
Watauga Association. They formed a written constitution, the first ever
adopted west of the mountains, or by a community composed of
American-born freemen. It is this fact of the early independence and
self-government of the settlers along the head-waters of the Tennessee
that gives to their history its peculiar importance. They were the first
men of American birth to establish a free and independent community on
the continent. Even before this date, there had been straggling
settlements of Pennsylvanians and Virginians along the head-waters of
the Ohio; but these settlements remained mere parts of the colonies
behind them, and neither grew into a separate community, nor played a
distinctive part in the growth of the west.
The first step taken by the Watauga settlers,[24] when they had
determined to organize, was to meet in general convention, holding a
kind of folk-thing, akin to the New England town-meeting. They then
elected a representative assembly, a small parliament or "witanagemot,"
which met at Robertson's station. Apparently the freemen of each little
fort or palisaded village, each blockhouse that was the centre of a
group of detached cabins and clearings, sent a member to this first
frontier legislature.[25] It consisted of thirteen representatives, who
proceeded to elect from their number five--among them Sevier and
Robertson--to form a committee or court, which should carry on the
actual business of government, and should exercise both judicial and
executive functions. This court had a clerk and a sheriff, or executive
officer, who respectively recorded and enforced their decrees. The five
members of this court, who are sometimes referred to as arbitrators, and
sometimes as commissioners, had entire control of all matters affecting
the common weal; and all affairs in controversy were settled by the
decision of a majority. They elected one of their number as chairman, he
being also ex-officio chairman of the committee of thirteen; and all
their proceedings were noted for the prudence and moderation with which
they behaved in their somewhat anomalous position. They were careful to
avoid embroiling themselves with the neighboring colonial legislatures;
and in dealing with non-residents they made them give bonds to abide by
their decision, thus avoiding any necessity of proceeding against their
persons. On behalf of the community itself, they were not only permitted
to control its internal affairs, but also to secure lands by making
treaties with a foreign power, the Indians; a distinct exercise of the
right of sovereignty. They heard and adjudicated all cases of difference
between the settlers themselves; and took measures for the common
safety. In fact the dwellers, in this little outlying frontier
commonwealth, exercised the rights of full statehood for a number of
years; establishing in true American style a purely democratic
government with representative institutions, in which, under certain
restrictions, the will of the majority was supreme, while, nevertheless,
the largest individual freedom, and the utmost liberty of individual
initiative were retained. The framers showed the American predilection
for a written constitution or civil compact; and, what was more
important, they also showed the common-sense American spirit that led
them to adopt the scheme of government which should in the simplest way
best serve their needs, without bothering their heads over mere
high-sounding abstractions.[26]
The court or committee held their sessions at stated and regular times,
and took the law of Virginia as their standard for decisions. They saw
to the recording of deeds and wills, settled all questions of debt,
issued marriage licenses, and carried on a most vigorous warfare against
lawbreakers, especially horse-thieves.[27] For six years their
government continued in full vigor; then, in February, 1778, North
Carolina having organized Washington County, which included all of what
is now Tennessee, the governor of that State appointed justices of the
peace and militia officers for the new county, and the old system came
to an end. But Sevier, Robertson, and their fellow-committeemen were all
members of the new court, and continued almost without change their
former simple system of procedure and direct and expeditious methods of
administering justice; as justices of the peace they merely continued to
act as they acted while arbitrators of the Watauga Association, and in
their summary mode of dealing with evil-doers paid a good deal more heed
to the essence than to the forms of law. One record shows that a
horse-thief was arrested on Monday, tried on Wednesday, and hung on
Friday of the same week. Another deals with a claimant who, by his
attorney, moved to be sworn into his office of clerk, "but the court
swore in James Sevier, well knowing that said Sevier had been elected,"
and being evidently unwilling to waste their time hearing a contested
election case when their minds were already made up as to the equity of
the matter. They exercised the right of making suspicious individuals
leave the county.[28] They also at times became censors of morals, and
interfered with straightforward effectiveness to right wrongs for which
a more refined and elaborate system of jurisprudence would have provided
only cumbersome and inadequate remedies. Thus one of their entries is to
the effect that a certain man is ordered "to return to his family and
demean himself as a good citizen, he having admitted in open court that
he had left his wife and took up with another woman." From the character
of the judges who made the decision, it is safe to presume that the
delinquent either obeyed it or else promptly fled to the Indians for
safety.[29] This fleeing to the Indians, by the way, was a feat often
performed by the worst criminals--for the renegade, the man who had
"painted his face" and deserted those of his own color, was a being as
well known as he was abhorred and despised on the border, where such a
deed was held to be the one unpardonable crime.
So much for the way in which the whites kept order among themselves. The
second part of their task, the adjustment of their relations with their
red neighbors, was scarcely less important. Early in 1772 Virginia made
a treaty with the Cherokee Nation, which established as the boundary
between them a line running west from White Top Mountain in latitude 36
degrees 30'.[30] Immediately afterwards the agent[31] of the British
Government among the Cherokees ordered the Watauga settlers to instantly
leave their lands. They defied him, and refused to move: but feeling
the insecurity of their tenure they deputed two commissioners, of
whom Robertson was one, to make a treaty with the Cherokees. This
was successfully accomplished, the Indians leasing to the associated
settlers all the lands on the Watauga waters for the space of eight
years, in consideration of about six thousand dollars' worth of
blankets, paint, muskets, and the like.[32] The amount advanced was
reimbursed to the men advancing it by the sale of the lands in small
parcels to new settlers,[33] for the time of the lease.[34]
After the lease was signed, a day was appointed on which to hold a great
race, as well as wrestling-matches and other sports, at Watauga. Not
only many whites from the various settlements, but also a number of
Indians, came to see or take part in the sports; and all went well until
the evening, when some lawless men from Wolf Hills, who had been lurking
in the woods round about,[35] killed an Indian, whereat his fellows left
the spot in great anger.
The settlers now saw themselves threatened with a bloody and vindictive
Indian war, and were plunged in terror and despair; yet they were
rescued by the address and daring of Robertson. Leaving the others to
build a formidable palisaded fort, under the leadership of Sevier,
Robertson set off alone through the woods and followed the great war
trace down to the Cherokee towns. His mission was one of the greatest
peril, for there was imminent danger that the justly angered savages
would take his life. But he was a man who never rushed heedlessly into
purposeless peril, and never flinched from a danger which there was an
object in encountering. His quiet, resolute fearlessness doubtless
impressed the savages to whom he went, and helped to save his life;
moreover, the Cherokees knew him, trusted his word, and were probably a
little overawed by a certain air of command to which all men that were
thrown in contact with him bore witness. His ready tact and knowledge of
Indian character did the rest. He persuaded the chiefs and warriors to
meet him in council, assured them of the anger and sorrow with which all
the Watauga people viewed the murder, which had undoubtedly been
committed by some outsider, and wound up by declaring his determination
to try to have the wrong-doer arrested and punished according to his
crime. The Indians, already pleased with his embassy, finally consented
to pass the affair over and not take vengeance upon innocent men. Then
the daring backwoods diplomatist, well pleased with the success of his
mission, returned to the anxious little community.
The incident, taken in connection with the plundering of a store kept by
two whites in Holston Valley at the same time, and the unprovoked
assault on Boon's party in Powell's Valley a year later, shows the
extreme difficulty of preventing the worst men of each color from
wantonly attacking the innocent. There was hardly a peaceable red or
law-abiding white who could not recite injuries he had received from
members of the opposite race; and his sense of the wrongs he had
suffered, as well as the general frontier indifference to crimes
committed against others, made him slow in punishing similar outrages by
his own people. The Watauga settlers discountenanced wrong being done
the Indians, and tried to atone for it, but they never hunted the
offenders down with the necessary mercilessness that alone could have
prevented a repetition of their offences. Similarly, but to an even
greater degree, the good Indians shielded the bad.[36]
For several years after they made their lease with the Cherokees the men
of the Watauga were not troubled by their Indian neighbors. They had to
fear nothing more than a drought, a freshet, a forest fire, or an
unusually deep snow-fall if hunting on the mountains in mid-winter. They
lived in peace, hunting and farming, marrying, giving in marriage, and
rearing many healthy children. By degrees they wrought out of the
stubborn wilderness comfortable homes, filled with plenty. The stumps
were drawn out of the clearings, and other grains were sown besides
corn. Beef, pork, and mutton were sometimes placed on the table, besides
the more common venison, bear meat, and wild turkey. The women wove good
clothing, the men procured good food, the log-cabins, if homely and
rough, yet gave ample warmth and shelter. The families throve, and life
was happy, even though varied with toil, danger, and hardship. Books
were few, and it was some years before the first church,--Presbyterian,
of course,--was started in the region.[37] The backwoods Presbyterians
managed their church affairs much as they did their civil government:
each congregation appointed a committee to choose ground, to build a
meeting-house, to collect the minister's salary, and to pay all charges,
by taxing the members proportionately for the same, the committee being
required to turn in a full account, and receive instructions, at a
general session or meeting held twice every year.[38]
Thus the Watauga folk were the first Americans who, as a separate body,
moved into the wilderness to hew out dwellings for themselves and their
children, trusting only to their own shrewd heads, stout hearts, and
strong arms, unhelped and unhampered by the power nominally their
sovereign.[39] They built up a commonwealth which had many successors;
they showed that the frontiersmen could do their work unassisted; for
they not only proved that they were made of stuff stern enough to hold
its own against outside pressure of any sort, but they also made it
evident that having won the land they were competent to govern both it
and themselves. They were the first to do what the whole nation has
since done. It has often been said that we owe all our success to our
surroundings; that any race with our opportunities could have done as
well as we have done. Undoubtedly our opportunities have been great;
undoubtedly we have often and lamentably failed in taking advantage of
them. But what nation ever has done all that was possible with the
chances offered it? The Spaniards, the Portuguese, and the French, not
to speak of the Russians in Siberia, have all enjoyed, and yet have
failed to make good use of, the same advantages which we have turned to
good account. The truth is, that in starting a new nation in a new
country, as we have done, while there are exceptional chances to be
taken advantage of, there are also exceptional dangers and difficulties
to be overcome. None but heroes can succeed wholly in the work. It is a
good thing for us at times to compare what we have done with what we
could have done, had we been better and wiser; it may make us try in the
future to raise our abilities to the level of our opportunities. Looked
at absolutely, we must frankly acknowledge that we have fallen very far
short indeed of the high ideal we should have reached. Looked at
relatively, it must also be said that we have done better than any other
nation or race working under our conditions.
The Watauga settlers outlined in advance the nation's work. They tamed
the rugged and shaggy wilderness, they bid defiance to outside foes, and
they successfully solved the difficult problem of self-government.
1. Then called the Cherokee.
2. Volumes could be filled--and indeed it is hardly too much to say,
have been filled--with worthless "proofs" of the ownership of Iroquois,
Shawnees, or Cherokees, as the case might be. In truth, it would
probably have been difficult to get any two members of the same tribe to
have pointed out with precision the tribal limits. Each tribe's country
was elastic, for it included all lands from which it was deemed possible
to drive out the possessors. In 1773 the various parties of Long Hunters
had just the same right to the whole of the territory in question that
the Indians themselves had.
3. Campbell MSS.
"The first settlers on Holston River were a remarkable race of people
for their intelligence, enterprise, and hardy adventure. The greater
portion of them had emigrated from the counties of Botetourt, Augusta,
and Frederick, and others along the same valley, and from the upper
counties of Maryland and Pennsylvania were mostly descendants of Irish
stock, and generally where they had any religious opinions, were
Presbyterians. A very large proportion were religious, and many were
members of the church. There were some families, however, and amongst
the most wealthy, that were extremely wild and dissipated in their
habits.
"The first clergyman that came among them was the Rev. Charles
Cummings, an Irishman by birth but educated in Pennsylvania. This
gentleman was one of the first settlers, defended his domicile for
years with his rifle in hand, and built his first meeting house on the
very spot where he and two or three neighbors and one of his servants
had had a severe skirmish with the Indians, in which one of his party
was killed and another wounded. Here he preached to a very large and
most respectable congregation for twenty or thirty years. He was a
zealous whig and contributed much to kindle the patriotic fire which
blazed forth among these people in the revolutionary struggle."
This is from a MS sketch of the Holston Pioneers by the Hon. David
Campbell, a son of one of the first settlers. The Campbell family, of
Presbyterian Irish stock, first came to Pennsylvania, and drifted
south. In the revolutionary war it produced good soldiers and
commanders, such as William and Arthur Campbell. The Campbells
intermarried with the Prestons, Breckenridges and other historic
families, and their blood now runs in the veins of many of the noted
men of the States south of the Potomac and Ohio.
4. The first settlers on the Watauga included both Virginians (as
"Captain" William Bean, whose child was the first born in what is now
Tennessee, Ramsey, 94) and Carolinians (Haywood, 37). But many of these
Carolina hill people were, like Boon and Henderson, members of families
who had drifted down from the north. The position of the Presbyterian
churches in all this western hill country shows the origin of that
portion of the people which gave the tone to the rest, and, as we have
already seen, while some of the Presbyterians penetrated to the hills
from Charleston, most came down from the north. The Presbyterian blood
was, of course, Irish or Scotch, and the numerous English from the coast
regions also mingled with the two former kindred stocks, and adopted
their faith. The Huguenots, Hollanders, and many of the Germans being of
Calvinistic creed, readily assimilated themselves to the Presbyterians.
The absence of Episcopacy on the western border, while in part
indicating merely the lack of religion in the backwoods, and the natural
growth of dissent in such a society, also indicates that the people were
not of pure English descent, and were of different stock from those east
of them.
5. Campbell MSS.
6. For this settlement see especially "Civil and Political History of
the State of Tennessee," John Haywood (Knoxville, 1823), p. 37; also
"Annals of Tennessee," J. G. M. Ramsey (Charleston, 1853), p. 92,
"History of Middle Tennessee," A. W. Putnam (Nashville, 1859), p. 21,
the "Address" of the Hon. John Allison to the Tennessee Press
Association (Nashville, 1887); and the "History of Tennessee," by James
Phelan (Boston, 1888).
7. Now Abingdon.
8. It only went to Steep Rock.
9. November 5, 1768.
10. October 14, 1768, at Hard Labor, S. C., confirmed by the treaty of
October 18, 1770, at Lockabar, S. C. Both of these treaties acknowledged
the rights of the Cherokees to the major part of these northwestern
hunting-grounds.
11. Anthony Bledson.
12. May 16, 1771.
13. It is said that the greatest proportion of the early settlers came
from Wake County, N. C., as did Robertson; but many of them, like
Robertson, were of Virginian birth; and the great majority were of the
same stock as the Virginian and Pennsylvanian mountaineers. Of the five
members of the "court" or governing committee of Watauga, three were of
Virginian birth, one came from South Carolina, and the origin of the
other is not specified. Ramsey, 107.
14. In Collins, II., 345, is an account of what may be termed a type
family of these frontier barbarians. They were named Harpe; and there is
something revoltingly bestial in the record of their crimes; of how they
travelled through the country, the elder brother, Micajah Harpe, with
two wives, the younger with only one; of the appalling number of murders
they committed, for even small sums of money, of their unnatural
proposal to kill all their children, so that they should not be hampered
in their flight; of their life in the woods, like wild beasts, and the
ignoble ferocity of their ends. Scarcely less sombre reading is the
account of how they were hunted down, and of the wolfish eagerness the
borderers showed to massacre the women and children as well as the men.
15. In "American Pioneers," II., 445, is a full description of the
better sort of backwoods log-cabin.
16. Both were born in Virginia; Sevier in Rockingham County, September
23, 1745, and Robertson in Brunswick County, June 28, 1742.
17. Putnam, p. 21; who, however, is evidently in error in thinking he
was accompanied by Boon, as the latter was then in Kentucky. A recent
writer revives this error in another form, stating that Robertson
accompanied Boon to the Watauga in 1769. Boon, however, left on his
travels on May 1, 1769, and in June was in Kentucky; whereas Putnam not
only informs us definitely that Robertson went to the Watauga for the
first time in 1770, but also mentions that when he went his eldest son
was already born, and this event took place in June, 1769, so that it is
certain Boon and Robertson were not together.
18. The description of his looks is taken from the statements of his
descendants, and of the grandchildren of his contemporaries.
19. The importance of maize to the western settler is shown by the fact
that in our tongue it has now monopolized the title of corn.
20. Putnam, p. 24, says it was after the battle of the Great Alamance,
which took place May 16, 1771. An untrustworthy tradition says March.
21. In examining numerous original drafts of petitions and the like,
signed by hundreds of the original settlers of Tennessee and Kentucky, I
have been struck by the small proportion--not much over three or four
per cent. at the outside--of men who made their mark instead of
signing.
22. See, in the collection of the Tenn. Hist. Soc., at Nashville, the
MS. notes containing an account of Sevier, given by one of the old
settlers named Hillsman. Hillsman especially dwells on the skill with
which Sevier could persuade the backwoodsmen to come round to his own
way of thinking, while at the same time making them believe that they
were acting on their own ideas, and adds--"whatever he had was at the
service of his friends and for the promotion of the Sevier party, which
sometimes embraced nearly all the population."
23. Mr. James Gilmore (Edmund Kirke), in his "John Sevier," makes some
assertions, totally unbacked by proof, about his hero's alleged feats,
when only a boy, in the wars between the Virginians and the Indians. He
gives no dates, but can only refer to Pontiac's war. Sevier was then
eighteen years old, but nevertheless is portrayed, among other things,
as leading "a hundred hardy borderers" into the Indian country, burning
their villages and "often defeating bodies of five times his own
numbers." These statements are supported by no better authority than
traditions gathered a century and a quarter after the event and must be
dismissed as mere fable. They show a total and rather amusing ignorance
not only of the conditions of Indian warfare, but also of the history of
the particular contest referred to. Mr. Gilmore forgets that we have
numerous histories of the war in which Sevier is supposed to have
distinguished himself, and that in not one of them is there a syllable
hinting at what he says. Neither Sevier nor any one else ever with a
hundred men defeated "five times his number" of northwestern Indians in
the woods, and during Sevier's life in Virginia, the only defeat ever
suffered by such a body of Indians was at Bushy Run, when Bouquet gained
a hard-fought victory. After the end of Pontiac's war there was no
expedition of importance undertaken by Virginians against the Indians
until 1774, and of Pontiac's war itself we have full knowledge. Sevier
was neither leader nor participant in any such marvellous feats as Mr.
Gilmore describes, on the contrary, the skirmishes in which he may have
been engaged were of such small importance that no record remains
concerning them. Had Sevier done any such deeds all the colonies would
have rung with his exploits, instead of their remaining utterly unknown
for a hundred and twenty-five years. It is extraordinary that any author
should be willing to put his name to such reckless misstatements, in
what purports to be a history and not a book of fiction.
24. The Watauga settlers and those of Carter's Valley were the first to
organize; the Nolichucky people came in later.
25. Putnam, 30.
26. The original articles of the Watauga Association have been lost, and
no copies are extant. All we know of the matter is derived from Haywood,
Ramsey, and Putnam, three historians to whose praiseworthy industry
Tennessee owes as much as Kentucky does to Marshall, Butler, and
Collins. Ramsey, by the way, chooses rather inappropriate adjectives
when he calls the government "paternal and patriarchal."
27. A very good account of this government is given in Allison's
Address, pp. 5-8, and from it the following examples are taken.
28. A right the exercise of which is of course susceptible to great
abuse, but, nevertheless, is often absolutely necessary to the
well-being of a frontier community. In almost every case where I have
personally known it exercised, the character of the individual ordered
off justified the act.
29. Allison's Address.
30. Ramsey, log. Putnam says 36 degrees 35'.
31. Alexander Cameron.
32. Haywood, 43.
33. Meanwhile Carter's Valley, then believed to lie in Virginia, had
been settled by Virginians; the Indians robbed a trader's store, and
indemnified the owners by giving them land, at the treaty of Sycamore
Shoals. This land was leased in job lots to settlers, who, however, kept
possession without paying when they found it lay in North Carolina.
34. A similar but separate lease was made by the settlers on the
Nolichucky, who acquired a beautiful and fertile valley in exchange for
the merchandize carried on the back of a single pack-horse. Among the
whites themselves transfers of land were made in very simple forms, and
conveyed not the fee simple but merely the grantor's claim.
35. Haywood says they were named Crabtree; Putnam hints that they had
lost a brother when Boon's party was attacked and his son killed; but
the attack on Boon did not take place till over a year after this time.
36. Even La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (8, 95), who loathed the
backwoodsmen--few polished Europeans being able to see any but the
repulsive side of frontier character, a side certainly very often
prominent,--also speaks of the tendency of the worst Indians to go to
the frontier to rob and murder.
37. Salem Church was founded (Allison, 8) in 1777, by Samuel Doak, a
Princeton graduate, and a man of sound learning, who also at the same
time started Washington College, the first real institution of learning
south of the Alleghanies.
38. "Annals of Augusta," 21.
39. See Appendix.