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always been included in the same geographical limits with East Tennessee. Even the Franklin people invited the Cumberland settlement to become a part of the new State. But until James Robertson, in 1779, planted corn on the bluffs of the Cumberland River, this part of the State was known to trappers and traders alone. In 1748 the same Dr. Thomas Walker whose name has already been mentioned is said to have passed through the Cum- berland Gap, and penetrated to the waters of the river which takes its name from the mountain. Some histo- rians accord Walker the honor of having given this name to the geographical nomenclature of America. After this, and during the time of its commercial ascendency in the South, France had a station on the present site of Nashville. In 1766 Colonel James Smith, in conjune- tion with several others, one of whom was named Stone. attempted to explore the entire region of country between the Ohio and the Mississippi. Stone River still bears wit- ness to the expedition, which was the first authentic ex- ploration of that region of country. The accounts which Smith brought back to the older settlements created a fury of explorations, and each succeeding year saw an in- crease in the numbers of those who penetrated deep into the wilderness to hunt, to trap, and to trade.
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The chronicles of those times have not preserved full records of each expedition, nor perhaps would they pos- sess more than a factitious interest if we had them. Each party came for the same purpose. each encountered virtu- ally the same adventures, and each departed as it had come, leaving behind no vestige which remains. As yet there had been no breaking of the soil, no dropping of corn, no felling of trees. The hunter who found in the abundance of game an ample reward for the danger of its pursuit spread the fame of the region far and wide. The same glowing descriptions which caused a flood of emigration to pour over the western mountains of North
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Carolina now attracted general attention to the country around the " Salt Licks of the West." Even in those days an additional interest in the new country was excited by the accounts of the natural advantages it offered for trade and commerce. In 1769 or 1770 Mansker and a party of hunters had laden boats with furs and bear meat, the chief marketable commodities of the trapper, and, de- seending the river to Natchez, bartered these for articles of merchandise. On the voyage downward they saw the celebrated French Liek, and all around were herds of buffaloes. The woods resounded with their bellowing and the uproar of their battles. They also saw several de- serted forts, which seemed to them the unwritten legend of an extinet race.1 Mansker returned several times after this. Once he was accompanied by Isaae Bledsoe and Joseph Drake, who gave their names to Drake's Liek and Bledsoe's : ick. Mansker's Lick was named for Man- sker himself. 1 1775 De Mumbreun, or De Mumbrune, built a cabin at Eaton Station. In 1777 he made a trip to New Orleans. Another party of hunters descended the Cumberland in 1777, and made their way by water to Natchez.
But in 1778 the first settler of Middle Tennessee ap- pears in the figure of a trapper who came with a party of hunters from Kentucky to take possession of and secure permanently a part of the wilderness whose beauty and fertility were apparent to the least perceptive eye, and whose promise of future wealth found more than an ear- nest in the swift flowing river that ran through its midst. This was at a time when steamboats were as yet unknown, and when flatboats and canoes were looked upon as the natural means of inland navigation. But of all who
1 One of Mansker's party was named Stone, and Haywood attrib- utes to him the origin of the name of Stone River. Putnam spells this name Mansker. This is the name as signed to the articles of agreement, but in Haywood it is Mansco.
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came, Spencer was the only one who had a clear and well- defined idea of the object of his mission as the fore-run- ner of civilization. Ilis companions at first entered into the spirit of the enterprise, and assisted him to plant " a small field of corn." The dangers, however, which sur- rounded the undertaking were too great, and all but Spen- cer quailed before them. They returned to Kentucky, leaving him behind. It is told as a touching instance of the generosity and fearlessness of the man, that he broke his knife in two parts and gave one to Holliday, who had lost his own and feared to make the journey without one. Spencer had taken his abode in a large hollow tree near Bledsoe's Liek, which served the double purpose of pro- tection and concealment. Here he remained throughout the - entire winter. He saw no one and heard not the sound of a human voice. It is related as historically true that he passed once not far from the cabin in which dwelt a hunter in the service of De Mumbreun, and that the hunter, seeing the imprint of his enormous foot, be- came frightened and fled through the wilderness to the French settlements on the Wabash. This, however. is of doubtful authenticity and originated probably in later years, when the size of Spencer's foot had become one of the standing subjects of jest to the early settlers of Nash- ville. But in Spencer's sojourn and the small crop of corn we find the embryonic germ of Nashville and Mid- dle Tennessee. His gigantic figure, alone in the midst of endless forests. wandering and hunting throughout their vast depths, the herald of a coming civilization. cool, courageous, and self-reliant, going to sleep at night by a solitary camp-fire, with the hooting of owls and the screaming of panthers around him and with no assurance of the absence of a deadlier foe, is one of the most pic- turesque in the history of Southwestern pioneers. In the early part of 1778, Spencer's hollow tree and a hunter's hut here and there on the banks of the Cumberland were
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the only signs of human life where Nashville now stands. Within less than a year the same place was green with the growth of newly planted corn and alive with the activity of pioneer life.
It is not always an easy task to appreciate the causes which lead to any particular train of events, and to fix clearly in the mind the exact moment of each minor departure. We see the rain, but not the rising of the mist, the toppling of the clouds, the electric spark, and the rushing together of the drops. We cannot see, or perhaps we do not try to see. As we examine the chroni- cles of the earlier state historians, we can easily deter- mine the date and even the character of the first settle- ment of Middle Tennessee.1 This much is of authentic record. But what led to this going into the wilderness, the various causes which gradually brought about this effect, are hidden in a mist of indistinctness, and we can only see the broader objeets that enable us to infer the landscape whose details glimmer in our sight. In 1778 James Robertson was one of the most popular figures on the Watauga. He had acquired such fame as could be acquired on such a field. His. defense of Fort Watauga had eclipsed the fame of the most brilliant of the frontier leaders, and his name was familiar to Rich- mond and Charleston. Neither honor nor riches were lacking. Why should he again face the dangers of a frontier settlement ? This and numberless other questions of the same nature, the writers of those days fail to an- swer. One cause, in fact the chief cause, of our imper- feet knowledge of our earlier history is the lack of all literary activity. Haywood's history only comes down to within twenty years of the time he wrote, and Ramsey's
1 When the phrase Middle Tennessee is used, it applies to the Middle Tennessee of the present. Until the formation of the West- ern District, afterwards West Tennessee, all the region west of East Tennessee was known as West Tennessee.
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work was published in 1853. The life of the people is clearly before us. But the individual is hidden from us. There were no Pepys, no Walpoles, no Wraxalls to tell us how people lived and spoke and acted, when off the stage of history. We have no vivid pictures, no historical groups. History deals with details. The important events make chronicles. The diary which John Donelson kept of the wonderful cruise of "The Adventure " is a solitary exception, and enables us to see with present eyes the scenes he describes. Bishop Asbury's diary contains more suggestive matter than direct information, and his observations are all made from the standpoint of a faith which, though pure and noble, destroys half the historical value of what he has left. It is therefore impossible for us to watch the gradual growth of the desire again to try the western wilds as it developed in the minds of the first who made the attempt. We cannot see them sitting by
the evening fire and planning the coming venture. Their thoughts, their hopes, their desires are merely matters of conjecture. Our records of the ancient history of Tennes- see are scanty and imperfect, and the first settlement of Nashville is a part of the ancient history of this State. The results we can follow closely and accurately, but at times we lose the intellectual process which produced it. The gradual enhancement of lands as the result of its occupation by communities of the white race was one of the economic truths of that day as well as of the present. It was a force whose action within certain limits was cer- tain and invariable. Frequently, therefore, the price to be paid for land was the ordeal of Indian warfare which preceded the time of tranquillity and security which was sure to follow. It was the desire to better his condition, not the innate love of danger and hair-breadth escapes, which led Daniel Boone into the wilderness. That he was a brave man and that he possessed some of the requisites of heroic greatness, cannot be doubted or
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denied. But the theory which has found popular aecep- tation and has passed into the traditions of the present as a historical fact, that Boone was a kind of a philan- thropic forerunner of civilization with a bucolic fondness for solitude and communion with nature, is without the least foundation. The immortal lines in which Byron gives to " Daniel Boone, backwoods-man of Kentucky," one of " the great names which in our faces stare," and places him among those who are " beyond the dwarfing city's pale abortions, because their thoughts had never been the prey of care or gain," are poetical enough, but they are not true. Daniel Boone was a land speculator and the agent of land speculators, and in the expressive phraseology of the present day would be called a " land- shark." He entered land enough in Kentucky to have made him wealthy if he had but known how to perfect his title. He obtained numerous grants from Spain which he lost by his negligence. The poverty of his old age, which appeals to the sentimental imagination of this generation, was not the result of indifference but of ignoranec.
The earlier annals of the West and Southwest are filled with accounts of the attempts made by different men of note to gain vast estates in regions which have since become great commonwealths. Washington and Madison and Randolph are among the number. But the scheme which surpassed all others in breadth and activity was that which, according to the biographers of Boone, was suggested by the celebrated pioneer to those who composed the Transyl- vania company. Colonel Richard Henderson was at the head of this association, and, with the assistance of Boone, purchased from the Indians the country which lies within the natural limits of the Ohio, the Kentucky, and the Cumberland rivers. This purchase was made by Boone and Henderson at the Sycamore Shoals Treaty, held on the Watauga on the 17th of March, 1775. The price paid for what now constitutes the larger part of three
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States was about $50,000 worth of blankets, rifles, beads, and other trinkets. This purchase is important in the history of Middle Tennessee as having included the Cum- berland country, and as being one of the immediate causes which led to its settlement. The inducements held out to actual settlers by the Transylvania company were greater than those held out by the State. Henderson's purchase extinguished the Indian title, but according to the legis- lative construction of Virginia and North Carolina. it failed to vest it in him or his company. It is impossible to establish the chain of events which caused Robertson to lead a settlement to the Cumberland, but there is no doubt that the main cause was found in the desire of Henderson especially that Robertson should assist him in securing the western portion of his lands, or perhaps it would not be too expansive to say empire. The treaty and the purchase had been declared illegal and void by the governors of Virginia and North Carolina, but there still remained some hope that Henderson could perfect his title. The latter persuaded large numbers of inhabitants in the older States to emigrate to the new country, and we find Donelson and others from Virginia acting in con- cert with Robertson, in 1778, or perhaps earlier.
An agreement of some sort was made, the general out- lines of which were that Robertson and a party under him should first go by land to the Cumberland and make ready for the arrival of the others. Corn was to be planted, cabins erected, and stockades prepared. Donel- son was to come by water from Fort Patrick Henry on the Holston, by way of the Tennessee and up the Cum- berland. Robertson was to leave signs at a certain place on the Tennessee which should indicate to Donelson that all was well and that he could come through the country. The wives of Robertson's party, including Robertson's wife, were to come with Donelson.
In pursuance of this agreement Robertson, late in 1778,
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with a party of eight, including one negro, set out across the mountains through the Cumberland Gap, and trusting to paths of wild animals, which at times enabled them to penetrate the intricate forests, finally came to the banks of the Cumberland at the French Liek, so called from the French trading post, which had been erected there years before by permission of the Chickasaws. Imme- diately upon his arrival, Robertson compelled his party, who were eager to make the best of their priority of choice in order to obtain the best sites for cabins and the most fertile lands, to take the precaution of which he alone foresaw the necessity. Shortly after the arrival of Robertson's company, they were joined by another under Casper Mansker, the old trapper. The new settlers at onee made ready for the emergencies of their situation, and planted a erop of corn near Sulphur Springs. Rob- ertson, having seen the settlement well under way, started on foot for Kaskaskia, a frontier post which Colonel George Rogers Clark had recently captured, and which he made the centre of his operations against the British and their Indian allies. It was currently reported that he, as the western military representative of Virginia, had the power to sell the so-called cabin-rights which allowed to every actual settler a thousand acres of land around his cabin. The line had not been run and it was not yet certainly known whether French Liek and the adjacent territory were a part of Virginia or North Carolina.1 Robertson made satisfactory arrangements of some kind with Clark and returned to French Lick, bringing with him a large party of new settlers. They were on their way to Kentucky under the leadership of John Rains, who, yielding to Robertson's persuasions, returned with him. Rains has the credit of " being the first man to in- troduce neat cattle and horses upon the west side of the Cumberland River and into Middle Tennessee." Some 1 This was determined the spring following.
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of the new settlers built a fort on the east side of the river, several miles below French Lick. This was Fort Eaton. Shortly after the arrival of Rains, came a party of South Carolinans, who were the third addition to the original Robertson party in the space of a few months. These additions became so constant as to form almost a steady stream. The most important of those which fol- lowed, and who are peculiarly worthy of mention in a his- tory of the formation of this State, was that under John Donelson, whose trip in a boat called " The Adventure," from Fort Patrick Henry to French Lick, reads like a chapter in one of Mayne Reid's novels. The journal of the voyage which Donelson kept has been preserved, and gives a vivid and life-like reproduction of the events of the trip. The caption is, "Journal of a Voyage intended by God's permission, in the good boat Adventure, from Fort Patrick Henry, on Holston River, to the French Salt Springs on the Cumberland River, kept by John Donel- son." The party consisted of "men, women, children, and negroes." Their number is not known. Among them were James Robertson's family, a wife and five children. In addition to the Adventure, which carried a sail, there were several canoes and other craft, so that the whole constituted a miniature fleet. The Adventure left Fort Patrick Henry on the 22d of December, 1779. It did not get fairly under way until the latter part of February, having been detained at various points by low water, hard frost, and running aground.
The last entry in Donelson's diary is the following : " Proceeded on quietly until the 12th of April, at which time we came to the month of a little river running in on the north side, by Moses Renfroe and his company called ' Red River,' upon which they intended to settle.1 Here they took leave of us. We proceeded up Cumberland, nothing happening material until the 23d, when we reached 1 This was the beginning of Clarksville.
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the first settlement on the north side of the river, one mile and a half below the Big Salt Lick and called Eaton's Station, after a man of that name who, with several fami- lies, came through Kentucky and settled there.
" Monday, April 24th. This day we arrived at our journey's end at the Big Salt Liek, where we have the pleasure of finding Captain Robertson and his company. It is a source of satisfaction to us to be enabled to restore to him and others their families and friends, who were intrusted to our care, who some time since, perhaps de- spaired of ever meeting again. Though our prospects at present are dreary, we have found a few log cabins which have been built on a cedar bluff above the Liek by Cap- tain Robertson and his company."
This diary of Donelson's is one of the most valuable documents in the annals of this State. The style is elear, direet, and in a manner unobtrusive. Although there is little color in the narrative, it brings before us in sharp outlines the wonderful adventures of his voyage. It has been frequently reproduced, but it has never lost its fresh- ness of interest. There is nothing in Cooper to surpass it. But its chief historical value lies in the fact that it enables us actually to grasp as a tangible reality the dangers 'and difficulties which beset the earlier settlers of the State. The same things which occurred to Donelson and his party on water were occurring to others on land from Vincennes to the Gulf. The long and wearisome repetition of Indian butcheries and sealpings and burn- ings and torturings fails to give us so clear an under- standing of what it meant to go into the wilderness and found a new community as this simple record of the Adventure. It is not a matter of surprise that the de- seendants of Donelson himself occupied a large place in the subsequent history of the State. We cannot refuse him a hearty admiration for his coolness, his unda inted determination, his unpremeditated modesty. We find in
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him a worthy sire of the wife of Andrew Jackson. We find in this ordeal a worthy preparation for the develop- ment of those traits which alone could invade and conquer the wilderness. The trip was productive of good results, and in one instance wrought its own retribution. With Donelson was a family which had small-pox. It was in charge of a man named Stewart. Being compelled to keep at some distance from the rest, they were captured and killed by the Indians. As a result, small-pox took hold upon the latter and caused them to die by the thou- sands. To this fact has been attributed the immunity which gave the Cumberland settlements time to prepare for the onslaughts which followed.
CHAPTER XIV.
JAMES ROBERTSON.
UPON the arrival of Donelson's party in their new homes, they found those who had preceded them busy with hoe and hammer. Donelson himself built a cabin and stockade on Clover Bottom. Rains, according to Hay- wood, " settled the lands sinee called Deadrick Plantation," about two miles below Nashville. A station was built on the Bluffs, and received the name of Nashborough. Early in 1779 Robertson had arrived at the Great Salt Lick with the first settlers on the Cumberland. Donelson's party arrived on the 24th of April, 1780. On the 1st of May the compact of government was drawn up, and already eight stations are mentioned as entitled to delegates among the "Twelve Notables," or "General Arbitrators." Their names are Nashborough, Gasper's, Bledsoe's, Asher's, Freeland's, Eaton's, and Fort Union. In addition to these, there were several cabins fortified with stoekades able to withstand a small body of Indians. In times of great danger those who were scattered through the community collected together in one of the central stations, which were built generally in the form of a square, at the corners and in the centres between the corners of which were heavily built block-houses, with stoekades running from one to the other. The block-houses were provided with loop- holes. The entrance to the station was a gate, built as solidly as possible and fastened with a chain, but as mueh exposed as practicable to the block-houses on the sides. A single block-house built of heavy logs hewn into shape
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was capable of offering. a good defense, and those who were able bnilt one in preference to the more fragile but more easily erected cabins, which were built of smaller logs, generally round poles.
Among the first and most important steps taken by the new settlers was to supply that deficiency which is felt in every community, and which it is not too much to say the English-speaking people have alone been able to supply from their own resources. A form of government was devised by the settlers, and, as in the case of the Watauga Association, along the lines of precedents established by the laws of their ancestors. We find the same incidents of government in the Cumberland settlement which we found on the Watauga, and which existed in some shape or manner upon the banks of the Trent and the Ouse. The articles of agreement are a modernized reproduction of the powers and customs of the ancient court leet. The outlines and details of the compact were suggested and elaborated by Richard Henderson, the projector of the Transylvania scheme, and James Robertson. Henderson had instigated the Cumberland settlement. He had taken up his residence with the first comers and had made liberal disposition of the lands of his company, in order to attract emigration. He postponed the payments until the States of Virginia and North Carolina should have confirmed the title he had obtained from the Indians. A man of broad views and broader ambition, he aspired to found a new State on the Cumberland. He had seen much of the world, and he had a thorough appreciation of the genius of the American people. He had formed the first com- paet of government which was formed west of the Alle- ghanies, and having placed his undertaking upon what he considered a firm and republican basis, he had, with a singular mixture of audacity and patriotism, applied to be admitted to the confederacy as an independent State. This was in 1775, when the uncertainty of the impending
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war tried the nerves . and tested the loyalty of many who had less to risk than the Transylvania company or its leader.
The compact of government was drawn up in May, 1780. More than one half of the compact is devoted to the land office. The judicial and executive power was vested in a body of notables or judges, or triers, or gen- eral arbitrators, but was not to extend to capital punish- ment. The members were elected by the forts.1 These articles were signed at Nashborough, May 13, 1780. Two hundred and fifty-six names were attached. The rapidity with which the settlement spread was phenomenal even in an age when cities were built in a day, and states were made in a year. The centre of population was Nash- borough. Freeland's Station was a little to the north. Eaton's Station was on the east bank of the river. Gas- per's Station was several miles up the Cumberland, where the little village of Goodlettsville lies. Asher's was not far from Gallatin. Bledsoe's was near the Sulphur Springs in the neighborhood of Gallatin, and Fort Union was about six miles above Nashborough. These are those entitled to elect members of the committee of general arbitrators. But there were still others scattered at va- rious points up and down the rivers and creeks. Donelson had a fort on Clover Bottom called Donelson's or Stone's River. The first party, which under the guidance of James Robertson had settled at the French Lick, and even the Rains party, were still pioneers. The settlement became what the adventurers of that day called a settlement only upon the arrival of Donelson's party in the Adventure.
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