USA > Tennessee > Davidson County > Nashville > History of Nashville, Tenn. > Part 4
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The first occupants of the valley of the Cumberland within historic times were the Shawnee Indians, a race whose original abode tradition assigns to the Sewanee River, in the State of Florida. At one time or another they occupied nearly the whole stretch of country from the mouth of the Savannah River north-westward to Lake Erie. Bancroft speaks of them as "a restless nation of wanderers." About the middle of the eighteenth century the English traveler, Adair, came across an encampment of four hundred and fifty of them, who had been straggling in the woods for four years, not far from the head waters of the Mobile River, and were on their way to the country of the Muscogees. About 1698 three or four score of their families removed from South Carolina, and, with the consent of the Government of Pennsylvania, planted them- selves on the Susquehanna. "They spoke a dialect of the Algonquin language, which was one of the original tongues of the North American Continent, and was spoken by every tribe from the Chesapeake to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and westward to the Mississippi and Lake Superior: the only exception in this vast strip of country being the Huron-Iroquois language, spoken by the Hurons, Petuns, Neuters, and Iroquois."
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HISTORY OF NASHVILLE.
The exact date when the Shawnees first came to the Cumberland is not known; but it is probable that they were at least beginning to take possession of the land as far back as 1650, and that they held it for something over a half-century. In 1772 Little Cornplanter, an intelli- gent Cherokee chief, informed some American gentlemen that one hun- dred years before the Shawnees had, with the consent of his tribe, re- moved from the Savannah River, in Georgia, to the Cumberland. There are many known facts that corroborate his statement, but it is impossible to speak with absolute certainty as to the time when the event which he mentioned took place, nor do we consider it very important to determine a matter of this sort.
· From the first the Shawnees were hard pressed in their new home. In about 1672 they were overrun by the Iroquois from the north, who ever afterward, down to the treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, claimed the country by right of conquest. The Cherokees on the east, once their friends, and the Chickasaws on the west also combined against them. Driven by these hostile incursions, and drawn by the friendly invitation of the French La Salle, they began as early as 1681 to migrate to Illinois and Indiana. It is probable that by the year 1714 they were all gone, some of them stopping till 1762 on the Green River, in Kentucky, and then passing on to their kinsmen on the Wabash. When M. Charleville, in 1714, opened a store on the present site of Nashville he occupied the fort of the Shawnees as his dwelling. Their number had become so re- duced that they determined to abandon the Cumberland entirely, and accordingly set sail down the river. The story of what followed is trag- ical to the last limit, and even after the lapse of nearly two centuries cannot be read without emotion. The Chickasaws, whose head-quar- ters were on the bluff at the present city of Memphis, hearing of the pro- posed migration, determined, with true savage spirit, to strike a final and fatal blow. For this purpose a large party of their warriors, provided with canoes, posted themselves in ambush on both sides of the Cumber- land, at a place a short distance above the mouth of the Harpeth. The scheme proved entirely successful. The unsuspecting Shawnees were overtaken with a dreadful slaughter. Not merely were they defeated, and their goods captured; but without a single exception, so the bloody story runs, they were put to death, and not a man survived to join his old friends in the North-west. But this was only an insignificant remnant. The great majority, including perhaps the flower of the nation, had al- ready escaped; and for some time they continued to make occasional raids into their old haunts. At length, however, either from mutual fear or from some other cause, both Chickasaws and Shawnees forsook the
4
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MOUND BUILDERS, INDIANS, AND FRENCH.
country entirely. For about sixty years, prior to 1780, it was utterly without occupants, and was not often visited even by transient hunting parties. This fact explains the great abundance of wild game-buffalo, bear, elk, deer, wild turkeys, and so forth-with which the country was filled when it was first entered by white settlers. "Small parties of Shawnees occasionally infested the frontiers after the whites had come into it, and, from their familiarity with the mountains, the rivers, and the paths, they were able to inflict serious damage on the infant settlements. A part of the banditti who afterward infested the Tennessee River and committed such shocking outrages on emigrants and navigators at the celebrated passes were Shawnees." In the West the tribe became strong and famous. They took a conspicuous part at the close of the last and the beginning of the present century in the wars against the American forces led by St. Clair and Mad Anthony Wayne; and among the whole race of red men there has probably not arisen one who was, all in all, the superior of the great warrior, Tecumseh, or of his brother, the Shawnee Prophet. Exit the Mound Builders. Exit the Shawnees.
In the year 1682 the Chevalier La Salle, inspired by the example of Father Marquette, and anxious to achieve distinction and wealth, sailed down the Mississippi River from the lakes to the Gulf, and formally took possession of the entire valley in the name of his royal master, Louis XIV. of France. In the course of his voyage he paused long enough to build a cabin and a fort on the site which the city of Memphis now occupies. It is also affirmed that he entered into amicable relations with the Chickasaw Indians, who then lived at that point, and that he es- tablished a trading-post, which was designed to be a sort of half-way place between the French settlements in Illinois and those yet to be founded below. Another interesting fact is that La Salle here crossed the track along which the Spanish De Soto had gone with his small but intrepid army one hundred and thirty years before.
A magnificent territorial empire was thus added to the dominions of the French crown. But, great as was the rejoicing over the new acqui- sition, it did not for a long time prove to be of much value. At the end of the first twenty-five years it had cost far more than it had come to: and there did not seem to be the least prospect that it would soon develop into a self-supporting province. We need not be surprised, therefore, that in 1713 the "Grande Monarque" leased it on easy terms to An- thony Crozat, a man who had made vast sums of money in other enter- prises, and who did not doubt his ability to do the same in this one. His head was filled with all sorts of ambitious schemes. There were three ways in which he expected to enrich himself: by discovering mines of
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HISTORY OF NASHVILLE.
precious minerals, which he believed to be numerous in different parts of the country; by trading with the Spanish colonies in Texas and Mexico; and by bartering with the Indian tribes for furs. In a very few years he was glad to withdraw from the venture, after having spent 125,000 livres more than he had gained.
In pursuance of his general plan, he established trading-stations at dif- ferent points along the Mississippi Valley. In 1714 one of his represent- atives, M. Charleville, came to Nashville, and took up his residence in an old fort which the Shawnees had built on the mound about seventy yards from the river and at the same distance from Lick Branch. How long he remained here it is difficult to say. Judge Haywood says that it was for many years, but he does not give his authority for the statement. As Crozat surrendered his lease in 1717, it is not likely that his agents would continue in the wilderness for a much longer period of time. Nevertheless, it is probable that companies of French traders occasion- ally visited Nashville during the greater part of the first half of the eight- eenth century.
As early certainly as 1775, and possibly ten years before that time, came Timothy Demonbreun, also a French trader. His residence at first was not continuous; but he afterward made a permanent settlement, and lived at Nashville till the time of his death in 1826, having previously enjoyed the great satisfaction of helping to entertain his countryman, La- fayette, who visited the city in 1824. " His descendants still live in Nashville, and have in their possession the old watch and gun which he carried in the siege of Quebec, where he was a soldier under Montcalm in that memorable defeat which decided the fate of the French colonies in North America. The tradition in the family is that after the battle of Quebec, in which he was severely wounded, he came to the French town of Kaskaskia, in Illinois, and from that place, with a hunting party in boats or pirogues, made his way up the Ohio and Cumberland Rivers to the well-known French Lick. Abating all mythical traditions, more or less of which have been naturally associated with one who ventured into this region at so early a period, there are facts enough to warrant the conclusion that Demonbreun was here in advance of the first Ameri- can settlers for ten or fifteen years."
CHAPTER III.
INITIAL MOVEMENTS TOWARD SETTLEMENT.
Cornelius Dougherty-Trappers and Traders-Adair's Visit to the Cherokees-Walker's Expe- dition of 1748-The Naming of the Cumberland River and Mountains-Fort Loudon Built -Long Island Fort-Colonel Daniel Boone-Colonel James Smith's Expedition-Isaac Lindsey Reaches Nashville-John Rains, Casper Mansker, and Others, in 1769-Mansker's Trip to Natchez-Colonel James Knox's Expedition-Mansker, John Montgomery, and Others, in 1771-Spencer's Mission-The Tide of Immigration Which Followed.
T HAT such a country as the one which we have described in our opening chapter should remain permanently unoccupied by men of English extraction was not a possibility. It was written in the book of fate that the same race which had spread itself along the Atlantic coast from New England to Georgia, and had cut wide gaps in the primeval forests on both sides of the Blue Ridge, should also push westward to the interior of the continent, and take possession of the broad and fertile valleys lying beyond the Alleghany and Cumberland Mountains.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, nearly one hundred years after the first settlement at Jamestown, there was not a single Anglo- Saxon within the limits of the State of Tennessee, unless we except that Cornelius Dougherty, who, as early as 1690, established himself among the Cherokees about forty or fifty miles below where the city of Knoxville now stands. At the middle of the century the condition of things was much the same, though by 1740 a regular route of communication for pack-horses and traders was opened along the Great Path from Virginia to the center of the Cherokee Nation. The westernmost hunter's cabin at that time was on Otter River, in what is now Bedford County, Va., nearly one hundred and seventy-five miles east of Bristol. The com- merce with the Indians proved to be very profitable, and attracted not only many traders, but also others who pursued trapping and hunting in- dependently of the Indians. Not one, however, of all these earliest ad- venturers seems to have had any thought of making for himself a perma- nent home in the wilderness. They came to accomplish a definite ob- ject; and, when it was done, they returned. But in a few years all this was changed. Before the century was completed not only had a line of settlements been effected reaching from the Virginia line almost to the Mississippi River; but a new and sovereign State, invested with all the functions of political life, had been started upon its high and glorious career.
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HISTORY OF NASHVILLE.
The march of events culminating in such a result was exceedingly rapid. We can take no notice of the visit of the English Adair to the Cherokees in 1730, though the volume in which he gives an account of his experiences, and which was published in London in 1775, is still one of the most valuable of our sources of information concerning that tribe of Indians.
As early as 1748 Dr. Thomas Walker, of Virginia, accompanied by Colonels Wood, Patton, and Buchanan, Captain Charles Campbell, and others, made an extensive tour of exploration on the Western waters. They passed through Powell's Valley, and gave the name of the Cum- berland Mountains to the lofty range which they saw upon the west. Moving down this range in a south-western direction, they came to that remarkable depression through which the tide of emigration was destined to roll in a large and steady volume for more than half a century, and called it Cumberland Gap. It has lately been pierced by a great rail- road tunnel. One cannot think without a sigh that in blasting for the tunnel the generous spring of water that refreshed so many thousands of weary travelers was utterly and permanently destroyed. On the western side of the mountain Dr. Walker and his friends found a beautiful mountain stream, and named it Cumberland River. The Duke of Cum- berland was at that time prime minister of England, and these loyal Vir- ginians were glad to honor him by leaving his name in the Western wilds.
In the year 1756, at a point on the Little Tennessee River thirty miles below Knoxville, Fort Loudon was built and garrisoned with English troops. It was estimated to be five hundred miles from Charleston, and almost one hundred and seventy-five miles west of any civilized commu- nity. In the first instance it was designed, not as a settlement, but simply as a military outpost, to face the threatened encroachments of the French from the Mississippi Valley. The story of its capture by the Cherokees some four years later, and of the inhuman butchery of its brave defend- ers, is one of thrilling interest. That Tennesseeans should be as igno- rant as they usually are concerning such an incident is a shame and a scandal. Our very children ought to know it in all its details; but, as it has no immediate bearing upon our theme, we shall not pause to narrate it here. For the same reason, we shall barely call attention to the fact that in 1758 a detachment of Virginia soldiers under Colonel Bird erected another fort on the north bank of the Holston, nearly opposite the upper end of the Long Island. "It was situated on a beautiful level, and was built upon a large plan, with proper bastions, and the walls thick enough to stop the force of small cannon-shot. The gates were spiked with large nails, so that the wood was all covered. The army wintered
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INITIAL MOVEMENTS TOWARD SETTLEMENT.
there in the winter of 1758. The line between Virginia and North Caro- lina had not then been extended beyond the Steep Rock. Long Island Fort was believed to be upon the territory of the former State; but it was really south of the line, and the Virginians consequently are entitled to the honor of building the second Anglo-American fort within the bound- aries of Tennessee."
It is a matter of State patriotism to believe that in 1760 that Nimrod of the Western forests, Daniel Boone, " cilled a bar" on a beech-tree in the valley of Boone's Creek, in what is now Washington County, Tenn. We confess, however, to the sin of suspecting that if the rigid methods of the skeptical historians were applied to this story, it would have to fol- low the myths of early Rome and the later legend of Gessler and Tell, to say nothing of the hatchet and the cherry-tree with which good Parson Weems has associated the name of George Washington, into the limbo of exploded beliefs. But there can be no doubt that in 1761 Boone came as far west as to the Wolf Hills, now Abingdon, in the State of Virginia. It was three years later still when he stood on one of the spurs of the Cumberland and said to his friend and traveling companion, Calloway: "I am richer than the man mentioned in the Scripture, who owned the cattle on a thousand hills-I own the wild beasts in more than a thousand valleys."
"About the last of June, 1766, Colonel James Smith set off to explore the great body of rich lands, which by conversing with the Indians, he understood to lie between the Ohio and Cherokee (Tennessee) Rivers, and lately ceded by a treaty made with Sir William Johnson to the king of Great Britain .* He went in the first place to the Holston River, and thence traveled northwardly in company with Joshua Horton, Uriah Stone, and William Baker, who came from Carlisle, Pa .- four in all-and a slave. aged eighteen, belonging to Horton. They explored the country south of Kentucky, and no vestige of a white man was to be found there. They also explored Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers from Stone's River down to the Ohio. Stone's River is a branch of the Cumberland, and empties into it about eight or ten miles above Nashville. It was so named in the journal of these explorers after Mr. Stone, one of their number, and has ever since retained the name. When they came to the mouth of the Tennessee Colonel Smith proceeded to return home, and the others to go to Illinois. They gave to Colonel Smith the greater part of their powder and lead, amounting only to half a pound of the former and a propor- tionate quantity of the latter. Mr. Horton also left with him his slave.
* Haywood evidently blunders here. The treaty of Fort Stanwix, to which he refers, was not made till 1768.
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HISTORY OF NASHVILLE.
and Smith set off with him through the wilderness to Carolina. Near a buffalo-path they made themselves a shelter; but fearing the Indians might pass that way and discover his place, he removed to a greater dis- tance from it. After remaining there six weeks, he proceeded on his journey, and arrived in Carolina in October. He thence traveled to Fort Chissel [Chiswell], in Wythe County, Va., and from there returned home to Coneco Cheague in the fall of 1767."* Ramsey says: " This explora- tion of Colonel Smith's was, with the exception of Scoggins's, of which little is known, the first that had been made of the country west of the Cumberland Mountains, in Tennessee, by any of the Anglo-American race. The extraordinary fertility of the soil on the lower Cumberland, the luxuriant cane-brakes upon the table-lands of its tributaries, its dark and variegated forests, its rich flora, its exuberant pasturage-in a word, the exact adaptation of the country to all the wants and purposes of a flourishing community-impressed the explorer with the importance of his discovery, and of its great value to such of his countrymen as should afterward come in and possess it. Not strange was it that the recital of all that he had seen during his long and perilous absence should excite 'in Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, as he passed home- ward, an urgent and irrepressible desire to emigrate to this El Dorado of the West."
In 1767 Isaac Lindsey and four others from South Carolina, true types of American pioneers, passed through Cumberland Gap, traveled down Rock Castle River, and reached Nashville. At the mouth of Stone's River they found Harrod and Stoner, who had come thither from Fort Pitt by way of Illinois.
On the second day of June, 1769, a company of more than twenty stalwart men, every one of whom was an expert woodsman and a crack shot, assembled on Reedy Creek, about eight miles from Fort Chiswell, in Wythe County, Va., with their eager faces set toward the west. The company included, among others, such notable characters as John Rains, Casper Mansker, Abraham Bledsoe, John Baker, Joseph Drake, Oba- diah Terrill, Uriah Stone, Henry Smith, and Robert Crockett. The route that they took led them by way of the Wolf Hills, Abingdon, Va. Thence they turned toward the north-west, and passed through Mocca- sin Gap into Powell's Valley, and through Cumberland Gap into Ken- tucky. After traveling for several days longer, they pitched a perma- nent camp in the limits of Wayne County, Ky., and spread themselves out in all directions to hunt and trap, with the understanding among themselves that they were to report at the camp at least once in every
* Haywood.
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INITIAL MOVEMENTS TOWARD SETTLEMENT.
five weeks. Some of them took a wide circuit in their tramps, wandering as far as to Roaring River and Caney Fork. On this latter stream, at a point considerably above the mouth, Robert Crockett was killed by a small party of Shawnees who were moving north. The Virginians con- tinued to hunt till April 6, 1770. By that time the novelty of the situa- tion had quite worn off; and a part of them, either seized with a sort of homesickness or else satisfied with what they had seen and otherwise experienced, concluded to return to the East.
But not all were of this mind. The irrepressible German, Casper Mansker, with ten others, including Uriah Stone, John Baker, Thomas Gordon, Humphrey Hogan, and Cash Brooke, took it into their heads to carry their furs, bear meat, and jerked venison, of all which they had se- cured a plentiful stock, to market at the Spanish Natchez. It was rather a wild conceit. None of them had ever been over the route which they proposed to take. There was danger of being wrecked on the river, and danger of being killed by the savages that lurked in the forest; and no certainty that at their journey's end, even if they reached it in safety, they would be able to barter their wares to any advantage. But the men of those days did not halt at small difficulties. They, in fact, rather re- joiced at the opportunity to face new and untried perils. Laying down their guns, and taking up their axes and other tools, they soon built two boats and two trapping-canoes. What would we not give for a glimpse of those rude crafts, as, with their loads of pelts and other products, they set sail for their distant port! As far as is known, this was the very first commercial venture ever made from the waters of the upper Cumberland. In due course of time they reached Nashville. As no "river reporter" was on hand to chronicle the fact of their arrival, and to ask them about their trip, we know but little concerning their stay at this place. They found, however, all the country round about the Sulphur Spring covered with herds of buffalo, and the ground so tramped down that it looked to them like an old field. As they moved on with the stream their bear meat began to spoil; but this did not daunt them. With the greatest good humor, they stopped on the bank, built them huge fires, and ren- dered it up into oil. At the mouth of the Tennessee they met a com- pany of Indians moving north, who robbed them of their guns and such other things as were of most value in the savage eye, but did them no · personal harm. Farther down they came into contact with some French- men trading to Illinois. It is good to note the extreme kindness that they received at the hands of these perfect strangers. Humanity often asserts itself where we least look for it. The gift of salt was a timely ad- dition to their stock of provisions; the tobacco cheered many a lonely
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HISTORY OF NASHVILLE.
hour as they ran slowly along with the lazy current, or sat at night by the camp-fires on the bank; and even a good prohibitionist may be al- lowed to say that the "taffy," a sort of rum, was not a thing to be de- spised. Haywood pauses at this point to remark that it was the first " spirits" they had had for many months. At last Natchez was reached and the cargoes were sold. Whether they fetched a fair price history does not tell us. It would be an unpleasant reflection, however, to think otherwise, and we sincerely hope that the sturdy hunters were able to line their pockets with good Spanish silver. Mansker was soon after- ward seized with a serious sickness that detained him at Natchez until May. As soon as he could travel he started back to his home on New River, and, after many adventures, reached it in the course of the year 1771.
The reports that were borne back into the older settlements by the men that had dared to face the dangers of the Western wilderness, creat- ed a great excitement. There has been nothing like it since, except possibly the fever that was produced throughout the East by the discov- ery of gold in California. Animated by various motives, groups of men collected themselves together at different points to prosecute the work of exploration still farther. "In 1770 an association of forty stout hunters was formed on New River, Holston, and Clinch, for the purpose of hunting and trapping west of the Cumberland Mountains. Equipped with their rifles, traps, dogs, and blankets, and dressed in hunting-shirts, leggins, and moccasins, they commenced their arduous enterprise, in the real spirit of hazardous adventure, through the rough forests and rugged hills. The names of these adventurers are not known, but the expedi- tion was led by Colonel James Knox. The leader and nine others of the company penetrated to the lower Cumberland, and, making there an ex- tensive and irregular circuit and adding much to their knowledge of the country, after a long absence, returned home. They are known, from the length of their sojourn, as the 'Long Hunters.'"'
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