ROBERTSON FOUNDS THE CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779-1780.
James Robertson.
Robertson had no share in the glory of King's Mountain, and no part in
the subsequent career of the men who won it; for, at the time, he was
doing his allotted work, a work of at least equal importance, in a
different field. The year before the mountaineers faced Ferguson, the
man who had done more than any one in founding the settlements from
which the victors came, had once more gone into the wilderness to build
a new and even more typical frontier commonwealth, the westernmost of
any yet founded by the backwoodsmen.
Robertson had been for ten years a leader among the Holston and Watauga
people. He had at different times played the foremost part in organizing
the civil government and in repelling outside attack. He had been
particularly successful in his dealings with the Indians, and by his
missions to them had managed to keep the peace unbroken on more than one
occasion when a war would have been disastrous to the whites. He was
prosperous and successful in his private affairs; nevertheless, in 1779,
the restless craving for change and adventure surged so strongly in his
breast that it once more drove him forth to wander in the forest. In the
true border temper he determined to abandon the home he had made, and to
seek out a new one hundreds of miles farther in the heart of the
hunting-grounds of the red warriors.
The point pitched upon was the beautiful country lying along the great
bend of the Cumberland. Many adventurous settlers were anxious to
accompany Robertson, and, like him, to take their wives and children
with them into the new land. It was agreed that a small party of
explorers should go first in the early spring, to plant corn, that the
families might have it to eat when they followed in the fall.
The Cumberland Country.
The spot was already well known to hunters. Who had first visited it
cannot be said; though tradition has kept the names of several among the
many who at times halted there while on their wanderings. [Footnote: One
Stone or Stoner, perhaps Boon's old associate, is the first whose name
is given in the books. But in both Kentucky and Tennessee it is idle to
try to find out exactly who the first explorers were. They were
unlettered woodsmen; it is only by chance that some of their names have
been kept and others lost; the point to be remembered is that many
hunters were wandering over the land at the same time, that they drifted
to many different places, and that now and then an accident preserved
the name of some hunter and of some place he visited.] Old Kasper
Mansker and others had made hunting trips thither for ten years past;
and they had sometimes met the Creole trappers from the Illinois. When
Mansker first went to the Bluffs, [Footnote: The locality where
Nashborough was built, was sometimes spoken of as the Bluffs, and
sometimes as the French Lick.] in 1769, the buffaloes were more numerous
than he had ever seen them before; the ground literally shook under the
gallop of the mighty herds, they crowded in dense throngs round the
licks, and the forest resounded with their grunting bellows. He and
other woodsmen came back there off and on, hunting and trapping, and
living in huts made of buffalo hides; just such huts as the hunters
dwelt in on the Little Missouri and Powder rivers as late as 1883,
except that the plainsmen generally made dug-outs in the sides of the
buttes and used the hides only for the roofs and fronts. So the place
was well known, and the reports of the hunters had made many settlers
eager to visit it, though as yet no regular path led thither. In 1778
the first permanent settler arrived in the person of a hunter named
Spencer, who spent the following winter entirely alone in this remote
wilderness, living in a hollow sycamore-tree. Spencer was a giant in his
day, a man huge in body and limb, all whose life had been spent in the
wilderness. He came to the bend of the Cumberland from Kentucky in the
early spring, being in search of good land on which to settle. Other
hunters were with him, and they stayed some time. A creole trapper from
the Wabash was then living in a cabin on the south side of the river. He
did not meet the new-comers; but one day he saw the huge moccasin tracks
of Spencer, and on the following morning the party passed close by his
cabin in chase of a wounded buffalo, halloing and shouting as they
dashed through the underwood. Whether he thought them Indians, or
whether, as is more likely, he shared the fear and dislike felt by most
of the Creoles for the American backwoodsmen, cannot be said; but
certainly he left his cabin, swam the river, and plunging into the
forest, straightway fled to his kinsfolk on the banks of the Wabash.
Spencer was soon left by his companions; though one of them stayed with
him a short time, helping him to plant a field of corn. Then this man,
too, wished to return. He had lost his hunting-knife; so Spencer went
with him to the barrens of Kentucky, put him on the right path, and
breaking his own knife, gave his departing friend a piece of the metal.
The undaunted old hunter himself returned to the banks of the
Cumberland, and sojourned throughout the fall and winter in the
neighborhood of the little clearing on which he had raised the corn
crop; a strange, huge, solitary man, self-reliant, unflinching, cut off
from all his fellows by endless leagues of shadowy forest. Thus he dwelt
alone in the vast dim wastes, wandering whithersoever he listed through
the depths of the melancholy and wintry woods, sleeping by his camp-fire
or in the hollow tree-trunk, ever ready to do battle against brute or
human foe--a stark and sombre harbinger of the oncoming civilization.
Spencer's figure, seen through the mist that shrouds early western
history, is striking and picturesque in itself; yet its chief interest
lies in the fact that he was but a type of many other men whose lives
were no less lonely and dangerous. He had no qualities to make him a
leader when settlements sprang up around him. To the end of his days he
remained a solitary hunter and Indian fighter, spurning restraint and
comfort, and seeking the strong excitement of danger to give zest to his
life. Even in the time of the greatest peril from the savages he would
not stay shut up in the forts, but continued his roving, wandering life,
trusting to his own quick senses, wonderful strength, and iron nerves.
He even continued to lie out at night, kindling a fire, and then lying
down to sleep far from it. [Footnote: _Southwestern Monthly_, Nashville,
1852, vol. II. General Hall's narrative.]
Robertson Travels Thither.
Early in the year 1779 a leader of men came to the place where the old
hunter had roamed and killed game; and with the new-comer came those who
were to posses the land. Robertson left the Watauga settlements soon
after the spring opened, [Footnote: It is very difficult to reconcile
the dates of these early movements; even the contemporary documents are
often a little vague, while Haywood, Ramsey, and Putnam are frequently
months out of the way. Apparently Robertson stayed as commissioner in
Chota until February or March, 1779, when he gave warning of the
intended raid of the Chickamaugas, and immediately afterwards came back
to the settlements and started out for the Cumberland, before Shelby
left on his Chickamauga expedition. But it is possible that he had left
Chota before, and that another man was there as commissioner at the time
of the Chickamauga raid which was followed by Shelby's counter-stroke.]
with eight companions, one of them a negro. He followed Boon's
trace,--Wilderness Road,--through Cumberland Gap, and across the
Cumberland River. Then he struck off southwest through the wilderness,
lightening his labor by taking the broad, well-beaten buffalo trails
whenever they led in his direction; they were very distinct near the
pools and springs, and especially going to and from the licks. The
adventurers reached the bend of the Cumberland without mishap, and fixed
on the neighborhood of the Bluff, the ground near the French Lick, as
that best suited for their purpose; and they planted a field of corn on
the site of the future forted village of Nashborough. A few days after
their arrival they were joined by another batch of hunter-settlers, who
had come out under the leadership of Kasper Mansker.
As soon as the corn was planted and cabins put up, most of the intending
settlers returned to their old homes to bring out their families,
leaving three of their number "to keep the buffaloes out of the corn."
[Footnote: Haywood, 83.] Robertson himself first went north through the
wilderness to see George Rogers Clark in Illinois, to purchase
cabin-rights from him. This act gives an insight into at least some of
the motives that influenced the adventurers. Doubtless they were
impelled largely by sheer restlessness and love of change and
excitement; [Footnote: Phelan, p. 111, fails to do justice to these
motives, while very properly insisting on what earlier historians
ignored, the intense desire for land speculation.] and these motives
would probably have induced them to act as they did, even had there been
no others. But another and most powerful spring of action was the desire
to gain land--not merely land for settlement, but land for speculative
purposes. Wild land was then so abundant that the quantity literally
seemed inexhaustible; and it was absolutely valueless until settled. Our
forefathers may well be pardoned for failing to see that it was of more
importance to have it owned in small lots by actual settlers than to
have it filled up quickly under a system of huge grants to individuals
or corporations. Many wise and good men honestly believed that they
would benefit the country at the same time that they enriched themselves
by acquiring vast tracts of virgin wilderness, and then proceeding to
people them. There was a rage for land speculation and land companies of
every kind.
The private correspondence of almost all the public men of the period,
from Washington, Madison, and Gouverneur Morris down, is full of the
subject. Innumerable people of position and influence dreamed of
acquiring untold wealth in this manner. Almost every man of note was
actually or potentially a land speculator; and in turn almost every
prominent pioneer from Clark and Boon to Shelby and Robertson was either
himself one of the speculators or an agent for those who were. Many
people did not understand the laws on the subject, or hoped to evade
them; and the hope was as strong in the breast of the hunter, who made a
"tomahawk claim" by blazing a few trees, and sold it for a small sum to
a new-comer, as in that of the well-to-do schemer, who bought an Indian
title for a song, and then got what he could from all outsiders who came
in to dwell on the land.
This speculative spirit was a powerful stimulus to the settlement not
only of Kentucky, but of middle Tennessee. Henderson's claim included
the Cumberland country, and when North Carolina annulled his rights, she
promised him a large but indefinitely located piece of land in their
place. He tried to undersell the state in the land market, and
undoubtedly his offers had been among the main causes that induced
Robertson and his associates to go to the Cumberland when they did. But
at the time it was uncertain whether Cumberland lay in Virginia or North
Carolina, as the line was not run by the surveyors until the following
spring; and Robertson went up to see Clark, because it was rumored that
the latter had the disposal of Virginia "cabin-rights"; under which each
man could, for a small sum, purchase a thousand acres, on condition of
building a cabin and raising a crop. However, as it turned out, he might
have spared himself the journey, for the settlement proved to be well
within the Carolina boundary.
Many Settlers Join Him.
In the fall very many men came out to the new settlement, guided thither
by Robertson and Mansker; the former persuading a number who were bound
to Kentucky to come to the Cumberland instead. Among them were two or
three of the Long Hunters, whose wanderings had done so much to make the
country known. Robertson's especial partner was a man named John
Donelson. The latter went by water and took a large party of immigrants,
including all the women and children, down the Tennessee, and thence up
the Ohio and Cumberland to the Bluff or French Lick. [Footnote: The plan
was that Robertson should meet this party at the Muscle Shoals, and that
they should go from thence overland; but owing to the severity of the
winter, Robertson could not get to the shoals.] Among them were
Robertson's entire family, and Donelson's daughter Rachel, the future
wife of Andrew Jackson, who missed by so narrow a margin being mistress
of the White House. Robertson, meanwhile, was to lead the rest of the
men by land, so that they should get there first and make ready for the
coming of their families.
Robertson's party started in the fall, being both preceded and followed
by other companies of settlers, some of whom were accompanied by their
wives and children. Cold weather of extraordinary severity set in during
November; for this was the famous "hard winter" of '79-80, during which
the Kentucky settlers suffered so much. They were not molested by
Indians, and reached the Bluff about Christmas. The river was frozen
solid, and they all crossed the ice in a body; when in mid-stream the
ice jarred, and--judging from the report--the jar or crack must have
gone miles up and down the stream; but the ice only settled a little and
did not break. By January first there were over two hundred people
scattered on both sides of the river. In Robertson's company was a man
named John Rains, who brought with him twenty-one horned cattle and
seventeen horses; the only cattle and horses which any of the immigrants
succeeded in bringing to the Cumberland. But he was not the only man who
had made the attempt. One of the immigrants who went in Donelson's
flotilla, Daniel Dunham by name, offered his brother John, who went by
land, £100 to drive along his horses and cattle. John accepted, and
tried his best to fulfil his share of the bargain; but he was seemingly
neither a very expert woodsman nor yet a good stock hand. There is no
form of labor more arduous and dispiriting than driving unruly and
unbroken stock along a faint forest or mountain trail, especially in bad
weather; and this the would-be drover speedily found out. The animals
would not follow the trail; they incessantly broke away from it, got
lost, scattered in the brush, and stampeded at night. Finally the
unfortunate John, being, as he expressed it, nearly "driven mad by the
drove," abandoned them all in the wilderness. [Footnote: MSS. on "Dunham
Pioneers," in Nashville Hist. Society. Daniel, a veteran stockman, was
very angry when he heard what had happened.]
Voyage of the "Adventure."
The settlers who came by water passed through much greater peril and
hardship. By a stroke of good fortune the journal kept by Donelson, the
leader of the expedition, has been preserved. [Footnote: Original MS.
"Journal of Voyage intended by God's permission in the good boat
_Adventure_ from Fort Patrick Henry of Holston River to the French Salt
Springs on Cumberland River, kept by John Donelson." An abstract, with
some traditional statements interwoven, is given by Haywood; the journal
itself, with some inaccuracies, and the name of the writer misspelt by
Ramsey; and in much better and fuller shape by A. N. Putnam in his
"History of Middle Tennessee." I follow the original, in the Nashville
Historical Society.] As with all the other recorded wanderings and
explorations of these backwoods adventurers, it must be remembered that
while this trip was remarkable in itself, it is especially noteworthy
because, out of many such, it is the only one of which we have a full
account. The adventures that befell Donelson's company differed in
degree, but not in kind, from those that befell the many similar
flotillas that followed or preceded him. From the time that settlers
first came to the upper Tennessee valley occasional hardy hunters had
floated down the stream in pirogues, or hollowed out tree-trunks. Before
the Revolution a few restless emigrants had adopted this method of
reaching Natchez; some of them made the long and perilous trip in
safety, others were killed by the Chickamaugas or else foundered in the
whirlpools, or on the shoals. The spring before Donelson started, a
party of men, women, and children, in forty canoes or pirogues, went
down the Tennessee to settle in the newly conquered Illinois country,
and skirmished with the Cherokees or their way. [Footnote: State
Department MSS., No. 51, Vol. II., p. 45:
"JAMES COLBERT TO CHAS. STUART.
"CHICKASAW NATION, May 25, 1779.
"Sir,--I was this day informed that there is forty large Cannoes loaded
with men women and children passed by here down the Cherokee River who
on their way down they took a Dellaway Indian prisoner & kept him till
they found out what Nation he was of--they told him they had come from
Long Island and were on their way to Illinois with an intent to
settle--Sir I have some reason to think they are a party of Rebels. My
reason is this after they let the Dellaway Indian at liberty they met
with some Cherokees whom they endeavoured to decoy, but finding they
would not be decoyed they fired on them but they all made their Escape
with the Loss of their arms and ammunition and one fellow wounded, who
arrived yesterday. The Dellaway informs me that Lieut. Governor Hamilton
is defeated and himself taken prisoner," etc.
It is curious that none of the Tennessee annalists have noticed the
departure of this expedition; very, very few of the deeds and wanderings
of the old frontiersmen have been recorded; and in consequence
historians are apt to regard these few as being exceptional, instead of
typical. Donelson was merely one of a hundred leaders of flotillas that
went down the western rivers at this time.]
Donelson's flotilla, after being joined by a number of other boats,
especially at the mouth of the Clinch, consisted of some thirty craft,
all told--flat-boats, dug-outs, and canoes. There were probably two or
three hundred people, perhaps many more, in the company; among them, as
the journal records, "James Robertson's lady and children," the latter
to the number of five. The chief boat, the flag-ship of the flotilla,
was the _Adventure_, a great scow, in which there were over thirty men,
besides the families of some of them.
They embarked at Holston, Long Island, on December 22d, but falling
water and heavy frosts detained them two months, and the voyage did not
really begin until they left Cloud Creek on February 27, 1780. The first
ten days were uneventful. The Adventure spent an afternoon and night on
a shoal, until the water fortunately rose, and, all the men getting out,
the clumsy scow was floated off. Another boat was driven on the point of
an island and sunk, her crew being nearly drowned; whereupon the rest of
the flotilla put to shore, the sunken boat was raised and bailed out,
and most of her cargo recovered. At one landing-place a man went out to
hunt, and got lost, not being taken up again for three days, though
"many guns were fired to fetch him in," and the four-pounder on the
Adventure was discharged for the same purpose. A negro became "much
frosted in his feet and legs, of which he died." Where the river was
wide a strong wind and high sea forced the whole flotilla to lay to, for
the sake of the smaller craft. This happened on March 7th, just before
coming to the uppermost Chickamauga town; and that night, the wife of
one Ephraim Peyton, who had himself gone with Robertson, overland, was
delivered of a child. She was in a boat whose owner was named Jonathan
Jennings.
The next morning they soon came to an Indian village on the south shore.
The Indians made signs of friendliness, and two men started toward them
in a canoe which the _Adventure_ had in tow, while the flotilla drew up
on the opposite side of the river. But a half-breed and some Indians
jumping into a pirogue paddled out to meet the two messengers and
advised them to return to their comrades, which they did. Several canoes
then came off from the shore to the flotilla. The Indians who were in
them seemed friendly and were pleased with the presents they received;
but while these were being distributed the whites saw a number of other
canoes putting off, loaded with armed warriors, painted black and red.
The half-breed instantly told the Indians round about to paddle to the
shore, and warned the whites to push off at once, at the same time
giving them some instructions about the river. The armed Indians went
down along the shore for some time as if to intercept them; but at last
they were seemingly left behind.
In a short time another Indian village was reached, where the warriors
tried in vain to lure the whites ashore; and as the boats were hugging
the opposite bank, they were suddenly fired at by a party in ambush, and
one man slain. Immediately afterwards a much more serious tragedy
occurred. There was with the flotilla a boat containing twenty-eight
men, women, and children, among whom small-pox had broken out. To guard
against infection, it was agreed that it should keep well in the rear;
being warned each night by the sound of a horn when it was time to go
into camp. As this forlorn boat-load of unfortunates came along, far
behind the others, the Indians, seeing its defenceless position, sallied
out in their canoes, and butchered or captured all who were aboard.
Their cries were distinctly heard by the rearmost of the other craft,
who could not stem the current and come to their rescue. But a dreadful
retribution fell on the Indians; for they were infected with the disease
of their victims, and for some months virulent small-pox raged among
many of the bands of Creeks and Cherokees. When stricken by the disease,
the savages first went into the sweat-houses, and when heated to
madness, plunged into the cool streams, and so perished in multitudes.
When the boats entered the Narrows they had lost sight of the Indians on
shore, and thought they had left them behind. A man, who was in a canoe,
had gone aboard one of the larger boats with his family, for the sake of
safety while passing through the rough water. His canoe was towed
alongside, and in the rapids it was overturned, and the cargo lost. The
rest of the company, pitying his distress over the loss of all his
worldly goods, landed, to see if they could not help him recover some of
his property. Just as they got out on the shore to walk back, the
Indians suddenly appeared almost over them, on the high cliffs opposite,
and began to fire, causing a hurried retreat to the boats. For some
distance the Indians lined the bluffs, firing from the heights into the
boats below. Yet only four people were wounded, and they not
dangerously. One of them was a girl named Nancy Gower. When, by the
sudden onslaught of the Indians, the crew of the boat in which she was
were thrown into dismay, she took the helm and steered, exposed to the
fire of the savages. A ball went through the upper part of one of her
thighs, but she neither flinched nor uttered any cry; and it was not
known that she was wounded until, after the danger was past, her mother
saw the blood soaking through her clothes. She recovered, married one of
the frontiersmen, and lived for fifty years afterwards, long enough to
see all the wilderness filled with flourishing and populous States.
One of the clumsy craft, however, did not share the good fortune that
befell the rest, in escaping with so little loss and damage. Jonathan
Jennings' boat, in which was Mrs. Peyton, with her new-born baby, struck
on a rock at the upper end of the whirl, the swift current rendering it
impossible for the others to go to his assistance; and they drifted by,
leaving him to his fate. The Indians soon turned their whole attention
to him, and from the bluffs opened a most galling fire upon the disabled
boat. He returned it as well as he could, keeping them somewhat in
check, for he was a most excellent marksman. At the same time he
directed his two negroes, a man and woman, his nearly grown son, and a
young man who was with him, to lighten the boat by throwing his goods
into the river. Before this was done, the negro man, the son, and the
other young man most basely jumped into the river, and swam ashore. It
is satisfactory to record that at least two of the three dastards met
the fate they deserved. The negro was killed in the water, and the other
two captured, one of them being afterwards burned at the stake, while
the other, it is said, was ultimately released. Meanwhile Mrs. Jennings,
assisted by the negro woman and Mrs. Peyton, actually succeeded in
shoving the lightened boat off the rock, though their clothes were cut
in many places by the bullets; and they rapidly drifted out of danger.
The poor little baby was killed in the hurry and confusion; but its
mother, not eighteen hours from child-bed, in spite of the cold, wet,
and exertion, kept in good health. Sailing by night as well as day, they
caught up with the rest of the flotilla before dawn on the second
morning afterwards, the men being roused from their watch-fires by the
cries of "help poor Jennings," as the wretched and worn-out survivors in
the disabled boat caught the first glimpse of the lights on shore.
Having successfully run the gauntlet of the Chickamauga banditti, the
flotilla was not again molested by the Indians, save once when the boats
that drifted near shore were fired on by a roving war party, and five
men wounded. They ran over the great Muscle Shoals in about three hours
without accident, though the boats scraped on the bottom here and there.
The swift, broken water surged into high waves, and roared through the
piles of driftwood that covered the points of the small islands, round
which the currents ran in every direction; and those among the men who
were unused to river-work were much relieved when they found themselves
in safety. One night, after the fires had been kindled, the tired
travellers were alarmed by the barking of the dogs. Fearing that Indians
were near by, they hastily got into the boats and crossed to camp on the
opposite shore. In the morning two of them returned to pick up some
things that had been left; they found that the alarm had been false, for
the utensils that had been overlooked in the confusion were undisturbed,
and a negro who had been left behind in the hurry was still sleeping
quietly by the camp-fires.
On the 20th of the month they reached the Ohio. Some of the boats then
left for Natchez, and others for the Illinois country; while the
remainder turned their prows up stream, to stem the rapid current--a
task for which they were but ill-suited. The work was very hard, the
provisions were nearly gone, and the crews were almost worn out by
hunger and fatigue. On the 24th they entered the mouth of the
Cumberland. The _Adventure_, the heaviest of all the craft, got much
help from a small square-sail that was set in the bow.
Two days afterwards the hungry party killed some buffalo, and feasted on
the lean meat, and the next day they shot a swan "which was very
delicious," as Donelson recorded. Their meal was exhausted and they
could make no more bread; but buffalo were plenty, and they hunted them
steadily for their meat; and they also made what some of them called
"Shawnee salad" from a kind of green herb that grew in the bottoms.
On the last day of the month they met Col. Richard Henderson, who had
just come out and was running the line between Virginia and North
Carolina. The crews were so exhausted that the progress of the boats
became very slow, and it was not until April 24th that they reached the
Big Salt Lick, and found Robertson awaiting them. The long, toilsome,
and perilous voyage had been brought to a safe end.
There were then probably nearly five hundred settlers on the Cumberland,
one half of them being able-bodied men in the prime of life. [Footnote:
Two hundred and fifty-six names are subscribed to the compact of
government; and in addition there were the women, children, the few
slaves, and such men as did not sign.] The central station, the capitol
of the little community, was that at the Bluff, where Robertson built a
little stockaded hamlet and called it Nashborough [Footnote: After A.
Nash; he was the governor of North Carolina; where he did all he could
on the patriot side. See Gates MSS. Sept. 7, 1780.]; it was of the usual
type of small frontier forted town. Other stations were scattered along
both sides of the river; some were stockades, others merely
block-houses, with the yard and garden enclosed by stout palings. As
with all similar border forts or stations, these were sometimes called
by the name of the founder; more rarely they were named with reference
to some natural object, such as the river, ford, or hill by which they
were, or commemorated some deed, or the name of a man the frontiersmen
held in honor; and occasionally they afforded true instances of
clan-settlement and clan-nomenclature, several kindred families of the
same name building a village which grew to be called after them. Among
these Cumberland stations was Mansker's (usually called Kasper's or
Gaspers--he was not particular how his name was spelled), Stone River,
Bledsoe's, Freeland's, Eatons', Clover-Bottom, and Fort Union.
As the country where they had settled belonged to no tribe of Indians,
some of the people thought they would not be molested, and, being eager
to take up the best lands, scattered out to live on separate claims.
Robertson warned them that they would soon suffer from the savages; and
his words speedily came true--whereupon the outlying cabins were
deserted and all gathered within the stockades. In April roving parties
of Delawares, Chickasaws, and Choctaws began to harass the settlement.
As in Kentucky, so on the banks of the Cumberland, the Indians were the
first to begin the conflict. The lands on which the whites settled were
uninhabited, and were claimed as hunting-grounds by many hostile tribes;
so that it is certain that no one tribe had any real title to them.
Formation of a Government.
True to their customs and traditions, and to their race-capacity for
self-rule, the settlers determined forthwith to organize some kind of
government under which justice might be done among themselves, and
protection afforded against outside attack. Not only had the Indians
begun their ravages, but turbulent and disorderly whites were also
causing trouble. Robertson, who had been so largely instrumental in
founding the Watauga settlement, and giving it laws, naturally took the
lead in organizing this, the second community which he had caused to
spring up in the wilderness. He summoned a meeting of delegates from the
various stations, to be held at Nashborough; [Footnote: It is to Putnam
that we owe the publication of the compact of government, and the full
details of the methods and proceedings by which it was organized and
carried on. See "History of Middle Tennessee," pp. 84-103.] Henderson
being foremost in advocating the adoption of the plan.
In fact, Henderson, the treaty-maker and land-speculator, whose purchase
first gave the whites clear color of title to the valleys of the
Kentucky and Cumberland, played somewhat the same part, though on a
smaller scale, in the settlement made by Robertson as in that made by
Boon. He and the Virginian commissioner Walker, had surveyed the
boundary line and found that the Cumberland settlements were well to the
south of it. He then claimed the soil as his under the Cherokee deed;
and disposed of it to the settlers who contracted to pay ten dollars a
thousand acres. This was but a fraction of the State price, so the
settlers were all eager to hold under Henderson's deed; one of the
causes of their coming out had been the chance of getting land so cheap.
But Henderson's claim was annulled by the legislature, and the
satisfaction-piece of 200,000 acres allotted him was laid off elsewhere;
so his contracts with the settlers came to nothing, and they eventually
got title in the usual way from North Carolina. They suffered no loss in
the matter, for they had merely given Henderson promises to pay when his
title was made good.
The settlers, by their representatives, met together at Nashborough, and
on May 1, 1780, entered into articles of agreement or a compact of
government. It was doubtless drawn up by Robertson, with perhaps the
help of Henderson, and was modelled upon what may be called the
"constitution" of Watauga, with some hints from that of Transylvania.
[Footnote: Phelan, the first historian who really grasped what this
movement meant, and to what it was due, gives rather too much weight to
the part Henderson played. Henderson certainly at this time did not
aspire to form a new State on the Cumberland; the compact especially
provided for the speedy admission of Cumberland as a county of North
Carolina. The marked difference between the Transylvania and the
Cumberland "constitutions," and the close agreement of the latter with
the Watauga articles, assuredly point to Robertson as the chief author.]
The settlers ratified the deeds of their delegates on May 13th, when
they signed the articles, binding themselves to obey them to the number
of two hundred and fifty-six men. The signers practically guaranteed one
another their rights in the land, and their personal security against
wrong-doers; those who did not sign were treated as having no rights
whatever--a proper and necessary measure as it was essential that the
naturally lawless elements should be forced to acknowledge some kind of
authority.
The compact provided that the affairs of the community should be
administered by a Court or Committee of twelve Judges, Triers or General
Arbitrators, to be elected in the different stations by vote of all the
freemen in them who were over twenty-one years of age. Three of the
Triers were to come from Nashborough, two from Mansker's, two from
Bledsoe's, and one from each of five other named stations. [Footnote:
Putnam speaks of these men as "notables"; apparently they called
themselves as above. Putnam's book contains much very valuable
information; but it is written in most curious style and he interlards
it with outside matter; much that he puts in quotation marks is
apparently his own material. It is difficult to make out whether his
"tribunal of notables" is his own expression or a quotation, but
apparently it is the former.] Whenever the freemen of any station were
dissatisfied with their Triers, they could at once call a new election,
at which others might be chosen in their stead. The Triers had no
salaries, but the Clerk of the Court was allowed some very small fees,
just enough to pay for the pens, ink, and paper, all of them scarce
commodities. [Footnote: Haywood, 126.] The Court had jurisdiction in all
cases of conflict over land titles; a land office being established and
an entry taker appointed. Over half of the compact was devoted to the
rules of the land office. The Court, acting by a majority of its
members, was to have jurisdiction for the recovery of debt or damages,
and to be allowed to tax costs. Three Triers were competent to make a
Court to decide a case where the debt or damage was a hundred dollars or
less; and there was no appeal from their decision. For a larger sum an
appeal lay to the whole Court. The Court appointed whomsoever it pleased
to see decisions executed. It had power to punish all offences against
the peace of the community, all misdemeanors and criminal acts, provided
only that its decisions did not go so far as to affect the life of the
criminal. If the misdeed of the accused was such as to be dangerous to
the State, or one "for which the benefit of clergy was taken away by
law," he was to be bound and sent under guard to some place where he
could be legally dealt with. The Court levied fines, payable in money or
provisions, entered up judgments and awarded executions, and granted
letters of administration upon estates of deceased persons, and took
bonds "payable to the chairman of the Committee." The expenses were to
be paid proportionately by the various settlers. It was provided, in
view of the Indian incursions, that the militia officers elected at the
various stations should have power to call out the militia when they
deemed it necessary to repel or pursue the enemy. They were also given
power to fine such men as disobeyed them, and to impress horses if need
be; if damaged, the horses were to be paid for by the people of the
station in the proportion the Court might direct. It was expressly
declared that the compact was designed as a "temporary method of
restraining the licentious"; that the settlement did not desire to be
exempt from the ratable share of the expense for the Revolutionary war,
and earnestly asked that North Carolina would immediately make it part
of the State, erecting it into a county. Robertson was elected chairman
of the Court, and colonel of the militia, being thus made both civil and
military commandant of the settlement. In common with the other Triers
he undertook the solemnization of marriages; and these were always held
legal, which was fortunate, as it was a young and vigorous community, of
which the members were much given to early wedlock.
Thus a little commonwealth, a self-governing state, was created. It was
an absolute democracy, the majority of freemen of full age in each
stockade having power in every respect, and being able not only to
elect, but to dismiss their delegates at any moment. Their own good
sense and a feeling of fair play could be depended upon to protect the
rights of the minority, especially as a minority of such men would
certainly not tolerate any thing even remotely resembling tyranny. They
had formed a representative government in which the legislative and
judicial functions were not separated, and were even to a large extent
combined with the executive. They had proceeded in an eminently
practical manner, having modelled their system on what was to them the
familiar governmental unit of the county with its county court and
county militia officers. They made the changes that their peculiar
position required, grafting the elective and representative systems on
the one they adopted, and of course enlarging the scope of the court's
action. Their compact was thus in some sort an unconscious reproduction
of the laws and customs of the old-time court-leet, profoundly modified
to suit the peculiar needs of backwoods life, the intensely democratic
temper of the pioneers and above all the military necessities of their
existence. They had certain theories of liberty and justice; but they
were too shrewd and hard-headed to try to build up a government on an
entirely new foundation, when they had ready to hand materials with
which they were familiar. They knew by experience the workings of the
county system; all they did was to alter the immediate channel from
which the court drew its powers, and to adapt the representation to the
needs of a community where constant warfare obliged the settlers to
gather in little groups, which served as natural units.
When the settlers first came to the country they found no Indians living
in it, no signs of cultivation or cleared land, and nothing to show that
for ages past it had been inhabited. It was a vast plain, covered with
woods and canebrakes, through which the wild herds had beaten out broad
trails. The only open places were the licks, sometimes as large as
corn-fields, where the hoofs of the game had trodden the ground bare of
vegetation, and channelled its surface with winding seams and gullies.
It is even doubtful if the spot of bare ground which Mansker called an
"old field" or sometimes a "Chickasaw old field" was not merely one of
these licks. Buffalo, deer, and bear abounded; elk, wolves, and panthers
were plentiful.
Yet there were many signs that in long by-gone times a numerous
population had dwelt in the land. Round every spring were many graves,
built in a peculiar way, and covered eight or ten inches deep by mould.
In some places there were earth-covered foundations of ancient walls and
embankments that enclosed spaces of eight or ten acres. The Indians knew
as little as the whites about these long-vanished mound-builders, and
were utterly ignorant of the race to which they had belonged. [Footnote:
Haywood. At present it is believed that the mound-builders were Indians.
Haywood is the authority for the early Indian wars of the Cumberland
settlement, Putnam supplying some information.]
Indian Hostilities.
For some months the whites who first arrived dwelt in peace. But in the
spring, hunting and war parties from various tribes began to harass the
settlers. Unquestionably the savages felt jealous of the white hunters,
who were killing and driving away the game, precisely as they all felt
jealous of one another, and for the same reason. The Chickasaws in
particular, were much irritated by the fort Clark had built at Iron
Bank, on the Mississippi. But the most powerful motive for the attacks
was doubtless simply the desire for scalps and plunder. They gathered
from different quarters to assail the colonists, just as the wild beasts
gathered to prey on the tame herds.
The Indians began to commit murders, kill the stock, and drive off the
horses in April, and their ravages continued unceasingly throughout the
year. Among the slain was a son of Robertson, and also the unfortunate
Jonathan Jennings, the man who had suffered such loss when his boat was
passing the whirl of the Tennessee River. The settlers were shot as they
worked on their clearings, gathered the corn crops, or ventured outside
the walls of the stockades. Hunters were killed as they stooped to drink
at the springs, or lay in wait at the licks. They were lured up to the
Indians by imitations of the gobbling of a turkey or the cries of wild
beasts. They were regularly stalked as they still-hunted the game, or
were ambushed as they returned with their horses laden with meat. The
inhabitants of one station were all either killed or captured. Robertson
led pursuing parties after one or two of the bands, and recovered some
plunder; and once or twice small marauding parties were met and
scattered, with some loss, by the hunters. But, on the whole, very
little could be done at first to parry or revenge the strokes of the
Indians. [Footnote: Putnam, p. 107, talks as if the settlers were
utterly unused to Indian warfare, saying that until the first murder
occurred, in this spring, "few, if any" of them had ever gazed on the
victim of scalping-knife and tomahawk. This is a curiously absurd
statement. Many of the settlers were veteran Indian fighters. Almost all
of them had been born and brought up on the frontier, amid a succession
of Indian wars. It is, unfortunately, exceedingly difficult in Putnam's
book to distinguish the really valuable authentic information it
contains from the interwoven tissue of matter written solely to suit his
theory of dramatic effect. He puts in with equal gravity the "Articles
of Agreement" and purely fictitious conversations, jokes, and the like.
(See pp. 126, 144, and _passim_.)]
Horses and cattle had been brought into the new settlement in some
number during the year; but the savages killed or drove off most of
them, shooting the hogs and horned stock, and stealing the riding
animals. The loss of the milch cows in particular, was severely felt by
the women. Moreover, there were heavy freshets, flooding the low bottoms
on which the corn had been planted, and destroying most of the crop.
These accumulated disasters wrought the greatest discouragement among
the settlers. Many left the country, and most of the remainder, when
midsummer was past, began to urge that they should all go back in a body
to the old settlements. The panic became very great. One by one the
stockades were deserted, until finally all the settlers who remained
were gathered in Nashborough and Freelands. [Footnote: By some accounts
there were also a few settlers left in Eaton's Station; and Mansker's
was rarely entirely deserted for any length of time.] The Cumberland
country would have been abandoned to the Indians, had Robertson not
shown himself to be exactly the man for whom the crisis called.
Robertson was not a dashing, brilliant Indian fighter and popular
frontier leader, like Sevier. He had rather the qualities of Boon, with
the difference that he was less a wandering hunter and explorer, and
better fitted to be head of a settled community. He was far-seeing,
tranquil, resolute, unshaken by misfortune and disaster; a most
trustworthy man, with a certain severe fortitude of temper. All people
naturally turned to him in time of panic, when the ordinarily bold and
daring became cowed and confused. The straits to which the settlers were
reduced, and their wild clamor for immediate flight, the danger from the
Indians, the death of his own son all combined failed to make him waver
one instant in his purpose. He strongly urged on the settlers the danger
of flight through the wilderness. He did not attempt to make light of
the perils that confronted them if they remained, but he asked them to
ponder well if the beauty and fertility of the land did not warrant some
risk being run to hold it, now that it was won. They were at last in a
fair country fitted for the homes of their children. Now was the time to
keep it. If they abandoned it, they would lose all the advantages they
had gained, and would be forced to suffer the like losses and privations
if they ever wished to retake possession of it or of any similar tract
of land. He, at least, would not turn back, but would stay to the bitter
end.
His words and his steadfast bearing gave heart to the settlers, and they
no longer thought of flight. As their corn had failed them they got
their food from the woods. Some gathered quantities of walnuts,
hickory-nuts, and shelbarks, and the hunters wrought havoc among the
vast herds of game. During the early winter one party of twenty men that
went up Caney Fork on a short trip, killed one hundred and five bears,
seventy-five buffaloes, and eighty-seven deer, and brought the flesh and
hides back to the stockades in canoes; so that through the winter there
was no lack of jerked and smoke-dried meat.
The hunters were very accurate marksmen; game was plenty, and not shy,
and so they got up close and rarely wasted a shot. Moreover, their
smallbore rifles took very little powder--in fact the need of excessive
economy in the use of ammunition when on their long hunting-trips was
one of the chief reasons for the use of small bores. They therefore used
comparatively little ammunition. Nevertheless, by the beginning of
winter both powder and bullets began to fail. In this emergency
Robertson again came to the front to rescue the settlement he had
founded and preserved. He was accustomed to making long, solitary
journeys through the forest, unmindful of the Indians; he had been one
of the first to come from North Carolina to Watauga; he had repeatedly
been on perilous missions to the Cherokees; he had the previous year
gone north to the Illinois country to meet Clark. He now announced that
he would himself go to Kentucky and bring back the needed ammunition;
and at once set forth on his journey, across the long stretches of
snow-powdered barrens, and desolate, Indian-haunted woodland.