USA > Tennessee > The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century: Comprising Its Settlement, as the. > Part 7
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71
Associations connected with Loudon as the first English fort erected within the State of Tennessee, the mournful fate of its garrison, and the tragic issue of the earliest Anglo- American settlement planted upon our soil, have invested the history of Old Fort Loudon with a romantic and melancholy interest-one that may be deemed elsewhere disproportioned to its real importance. But the writer persuades himself that the tediousness of the preceding details-scarcely in consonance with the object of these annals-will be excused, when it is considered, that hereafter no opportunity will present itself of again recording the surrender of a fort or the capture and massacre of a garrison. In the narration of the events upon which he will soon enter, it will be the grateful duty of the annalist to show, that in all their border conflicts, in their wild adventures into the wilderness, in their frequent invasions of neighbouring tribes, in their glo- rious participation in the struggle for independence and free- dom, in all their wars with European or American enemies, the sons of Tennessee have every where achieved success, triumph, victory, conquest and glory.
-
61
GRANT CONQUERS AT ETCHOE.
The indecisive battle at Etchoe and the catastrophe in the valley of the Tennessee, served only to stimulate Cherokee aggression ; and Canada being now reduced, an adequate force was at once sent from the north for the defence of the southern provinces. Col. Grant, early in 1761, arrived in Charleston with the British regular troops. A provincial regiment had been raised, and it accompanied the army to the Cherokee country. Among its field officers were Mid- dleton, Laurens, Moultrie, Marion, Huger and Pickens-after- wards so highly distinguished in the service of the country. The army arrived at Fort Prince George on the 27th of May. Attakullakulla hearing that a formidable army approached his nation, hastened to the camp of Col. Grant and proposed 1761 S terms of accommodation. But it was known that the temper of his countrymen was averse to peace, and his proposals received no encouragement.
" The Cherokees encountered Grant, with all their strength, near the town of Etchoe, on the Spot where they had fought with Montgomery in the previous campaign. For three hours did the engagement con- tinue, until the persevering valour of the whites succeeded in expelling the Indians from the field. * * * * Their granaries and corn fields were destroyed, and their miserable families driven to the barren mountains. The national spirit was, for a while, subdued, and they humbly sued for peace, through the medium of the old and friendly chief, Attakullakulla. 'I am come,' said the venerable chief, 'to see what can be done for my people, who are in great distress.' His prayer was granted, peace was ratified between the parties, and the end of this bloody war, which was supposed to have originated in the machinations of French emissaries, was among the last humbling blows given to the expiring power of France in North America.
" The peace which followed this victory over the Cherokees, and the expulsion of the French and Spaniards from the borders of the southern provinces, brought with it a remarkable increase of population and prosperity. Multitudes of emigrants from Europe and the middle provinces came out in rapid succession to the interior, and pursuing the devious progress of the streams, sought out their sources, and planted their little settlements on the sides of lofty hills, or in the bosom of lovely vallies."*
Emigrants from Ireland sought the wilds of America, through two avenues. The one by the Delaware Bay, whose chief port was Philadelphia-the other by a more southern landing -the port of Charleston. Those landing at the
* Simms.
68
TENNESSEE STILL UNSETTLED, AND .
latter place, immediately sought the fertile forests of the upper Carolinas, where they met a counter tide of emigra- tion. Those who landed on the Delaware, after the desira- ble lands, east of the Alleghanies, in Pennsylvania, were occupied, turned their course southward, and soon meeting the southern tide, the stream turned westward to the wilder- ness long known as "the backwoods, or beyond the moun- tains," now as Tennessee. These two streams from the same original fountain-Ireland-meeting and intermingling in the new soil, preserve the characteristic difference; the one possessing much of the air and manner of Pennsylva- nia, and the other of Charleston .*
But, as yet, Tennessee was a desert and a wilderness. The Adelantado of Cuba and his proud cavaliers had, indeed, looked upon its south-western angle, but resisted with unyielding spirit by the aboriginal inhabitants, the chivalry of Spain were driven across its western boundary, and glad to escape savage resentment for their daring invasion, buried themselves in the solitudes beyond it. At a later period, La Salle and his voyageurs had coasted along the shores of the great mediterranean of the west, and claimed for the mon- arch of France the magnificent valley watered by its tribu- taries ; and Marquette, in his pious zeal for his church, had attempted the conversion of the natives from heathenism and barbarity to the worship of the God of Heaven. Later still, England and her colonies had penetrated far into the western wilds, and erected a fort and planted an infant set- tlement upon the distant banks of the Tennessee. But the efforts of Spain, of France, and of England, had been alike unsuccessful in founding, upon the soil of Tennessee, a per- manent establishment of civilized man. The colonists of the Carolinas and of Virginia had been steadily advancing to the west, and we have traced their approaches in the direction of our eastern boundary, to the base of the great Apalachian range. Of the country beyond it, little was positively known or accurately understood. A wandering Indian would imperfectly delineate upon the sand, a feeble
· Foote.
63
IS VISITED BY TRADERS.
outline of its more prominent physical features-its magnifi- cent rivers, with their numerous tributaries-its lofty moun- tains, its dark forests, its extended plains and its vast extent. A voyage in a canoe, from the source of the Hogohegee* to the Wabash,t required for its performance, in their figurative language, "two paddles, two warriors, three moons." The Ohio itself was but a tributary of a still larger river, of whose source, size and direction, no intelligible account could be communicated or understood. The Muscle Shoals and the obstructions in the river above them, were repre- sented as mighty cataracts and fearful whirlpools, and the Suck, as an awful vortex. The wild beasts with which the illimitable forests abounded, were numbered by pointing to the leaves upon the trees, or the stars in a cloudless aky.
These glowing descriptions of the west seemed rather to stimulate than to satisfy the intense curiosity of the approach- ing settlers. Information more reliable, and more minute, was, from time to time, furnished from other sources. In the Atlantic cities, accounts had been received from French and Spanish traders, of the unaparalleled beauty and fertility of the western interior. These reports, highly coloured and amplified, were soon received and known upon the frontier. Besides, persons engaged in the interior traffic with the south- western Indian tribes had, in times of peace, penetrated their territories -traded with and resided amongst the natives-and upon their return to the white settlements, con- firmed what had been previously reported in favour of the distant countries they had seen. As early as 1690, Doherty, a trader from Virginia, had visited the Cherokees, and after- wards lived among them a number of years. In 1730, Adair, from South-Carolina, had travelled, not only through the towns of this tribe, but had extended his tour to most of the nations south and west of them. He was not only an enter- prising trader, but an intelligent tourist. To his observa- tions upon the several tribes which he visited, we are indebted for most that is known of their earlier history. They were published in London in 1775.
· Holston. t The Ohio was known many years by this name.
64
TRAFFIC WITH INDIANS
In 1740 other traders went among the Cherokees from Virginia. They employed Mr. Vanghan as a packman, to transport their goods. West of Amelia county, the country was then thinly inhabited; the last hunter's cabin that he saw was on Otter river, a branch of the Staunton, now in Bedford county, Va. The route pursued was along the Great Path, to the centre of the Cherokee nation. The traders and packmen generally confined themselves to this path till it crossed the Little Tennessee river, then spreading themselves out among the several Cherokee villages west of the moun- tain, continued their traffic as low down the Great Tennessee as the Indian settlements upon Occochappo or Bear Creek, below the Muscle Shoals, and there encountered the compe- tition of other traders, who were supplied from New-Orleans and Mobile. They returned heavily laden with peltries, to Charleston, or the more northern markets, where they were sold at highly remunerating prices. A hatchet, a pocket looking-glass, a piece of scarlet cloth, a trinket, and other articles of little value, which at Williamsburg could be bought for a few shillings, would command from an Indian hunter on the Hiwassee or Tennessee peltries amounting in value to double the number of pounds sterling. Exchanges were necessarily slow, but the profits realized from the ope- ration were immensely large. In times of peace this traffic attracted the attention of many adventurous traders. It became mutually advantageous to the Indian, not less than to the white man. The trap and the rifle, thus bartered for, procured, in one day, more game to the Cherokee hunter than his bow and arrow and his dead-fall would have secured during a month of toilsome hunting. Other advantages resulted from it to the whites. They became thus acquaint- ed with the great avenues leading through the hunting grounds and to the occupied country of the neighbouring tribes-an important circumstance in the condition of either war or peace. Further, the traders were an exact thermo- meter of the pacific or hostile intention and feelings of the Indians with whom they traded. Generally, they were for- eigners, most frequently Scotchmen, who had not been long in the country, or upon the frontier, who, having experienced
1
-
65
DOCTOR WALKER PASSES CUMBERLAND GAP.
none of the cruelties, depredations or aggressions of the Indians, cherished none of th ment and spirit of reta- liation born with, and every hifested, by the Ameri- can settler. Thus, free fro y against the aborigi- nes, the trader was allowed tomain in the village where he traded unmolested, even when its warriors were singing the war seng or brandishing the war club, preparatory to an invasion or massacre of the whites. Timely warning was thus often given by a returning packman, to a feeble and unsuspecting settlement, of the perfidy and cruelty meditated against it.
This gainful commerce was, for a time, engrossed by the traders ; but the monopoly was not allowed to continue long. Their rapid accumulations soon excited the cupidity of an -. other class of adventurers; and the hunter, in his turn, be- came a co-pioneer with the trader, in the march of civiliza- tion to the wilds of the West. As the agricultural popula- tion approached the eastern base of the Alleghanies, the game became scarce, and was to be found by severe toil in almost inaccessible recesses and coves of the mountain. Packmen, returning from their trading expeditions, carried with them evidences, not only of the abundance of game across the mountains, but of the facility with which it was procured. Hunters began to accompany the traders to the Indian towns; but, unable to brook the tedious delay of pro- ouring peltries by traffic, and impatient of restraint, they struck boldly into the wilderness, and western-like, to use a western phrase, set up for themselves. The reports of their return, and of their successful enterprise, stimulated other adventurers to a similar undertaking. " As early as 1748, Doctor Thomas Walker, of Virginia, in company with Colo- nels Wood, Patton and Buchanan, and Captain Charles Campbell, and a number of hunters, made an exploring tour upon the western waters. Passing Powell's valley, he gave the name of 'Cumberland' to the lofty range of mountains on the west. Tracing this range in a south-western direc- tion, he came to a remarkable depression in the chain : through this he passed, call Cumberland Gap.' On the western side of the ra F a beautiful mountain
5
86
FIRST GRANT IN TENNESSEE.
stream, which he named 'Cumberland river,' all in honour of the Duke of Cumbe hen prime minister of Eng-
land."* These name with Loudon, are belie of English origin.
er since been retained, and,
he only names in Tennessee
Although Fort Loudon was erected as early as 1756, upon the Tennessee, yet it was in advance of any white settle- ments nearly one hundred and fifty miles, and was, as has been related, destroyed in 1760. The fort, too, at Long Is- land, within the boundaries of the present State of Tennes- see, was erected in 1758, but no permanent settlements had yet been formed near it. Still, occasional settlers had begun to fix their habitations in the south-western section of Vir- ginia, and, as early as 1754, six families were residing west of New River. "On the breaking out of the French war, the Indians, in alliance with the French, made an irruption into these settlements, and massacred Burke and his family. The other families, finding their situation too perilous to be maintained, returned to the eastern side of New River; and the renewal of the attempt to carry the white settlements further west, was not made until after the close .of that war."t
Under a mistaken impression that the Virginia line, when 1756
extended west, would embrace it, a grant of land was this year made, by the authorities of Virginia, to Ed- mund Pendleton, for three thousand acres of land, lying in Augusta county, on a branch of the middle fork of the Indian river, called West Creek,# now Sullivan county, Tennessee.
In this year, Doctor Walker again passed over Clinch and
1760 Powell's river, on a tour of exploration into what is now Kentucky.
The Cherokees were now at peace with the whites, and hunters from the back settlements began with safety to pe-
. Monette The Indian name of this range was Wasioto, and of the river, Shawanee.
t Howe.
# The original patent, signed by Governor Dinwiddie, and now in the possession of the writer, was presented to him by T. A. R. Nelson, Esq., of Jonesboro, Ten- nessee. It is probably the oldest grant in the state.
87
FIRST ARRIVAL OF BOON.
1761 netrate deeper and further into the wilderness of Ten- nessee. Several of them chiefly from Virginia, hear- ing of the abundance of gamewith which the woods were stocked, and allured by the prospects of gain, which might be drawn from this source, formed themselves into a company, composed of Wallen, Scaggs, Blevins, Cox, and fifteen others, and came into the valley, since known as Carter's Valley, in Hawkins county, Tennessee. They hunted eighteen months upon Clinch and Powell's rivers. Wallen's Creek and Wal- len's Ridge received their name from the leader of the com- pany ; as, also, did the station which they erected in the present Lee county, Virginia, the name of Wallen's Station. They penetrated as far north as Laurel Mountain, in Ken- tucky, where they terminated their journey, having met with a body of Indians, whom they supposed to be Shawnees. At the head of one of the companies that visited the West this year " came Daniel Boon, from the Yadkin, in North- Carolina, and travelled with them as low as the place where Abingdon now stands, and there left them."
This is the first time the advent of Daniel Boon to the western wilds has been mentioned by historians, or by the several biographers of that distinguished pioneer and hunter. There is reason, however, to believe that he had hunted upon Watauga earlier. The writer is indebted to N. Gammon, Esq., formerly of Jonesboro, now a citizen of Knoxville, for the following inscription, still to be seen upon a beech tree, standing in sight and east of the present stage-road, leading from Jonesboro to Blountsville, and in the valley of Boon's Creek, a tributary of Watauga.
D. Boon
ORED
A. BAR On Tree
in
ThE
yEAR
1760
.
88
WALKER HUNTS ON OLINCH.
Boon was eighty-six years old when he died, which was September, 1820. He wan thus twenty-six years old when the inscription was made When he left the company of hunters in 1761, as mentioned above by Haywood, it is pro- bable that he did so to revisit the theatre of a former hunt upon the creek that still bears his name, and where his camp is still pointed out near its banks. It is not improba- ble, indeed, that he belonged to, or accompanied, the party of Doctor Walker, on his first, or certainly on his second, tour of exploration in 1760. The inscription is sufficient authority, as this writer conceives, to date the arrival of Boon in Tennessee as early as its date, 1760, thus preced- ing the permanent settlement of the country nearly ten years.
In the fall of the next year Wallen and his company return- 1762 [ ed again and hunted on the waters of Clinch; they ( crossed the Blue Ridge at the Flower Gap, New ri- ver, at Jones's Ford, and the Iron Mountain at the Blue Spring ; they travelled down the south fork of Holston, and crossing the north fork and going to the Elk Garden, on the waters of Clinch, they discovered some Indian signs: they extended their journey, in the same direction, to the Hunters' Valley- so named from their travelling to and down it several days to Black-water Creek. They fixed their station-camp near the Tennessee line, and on the present road from Jonesville to Ro- gersville. Some of the same company travelled down to Greasy Rock Creek, and fixed a station-camp there. It stood near the present line between Hawkins and Claibourne counties."
This year Wallen's company ventured further into the in- ( terior-passed through Cumberland Gap, and hunted 1763
during the whole season on Cumberland river; and
.A grant, signed Arthur Dobbe, Governor of the Province of North-Carolina, William Beamer, Senr., Superintendent and Deputy Adjutant in and for the Cherokee Nation, and William Beamer, Junr., Interpreter, and the Little Carpenter, Half King of the Cherokee Nation of the Over-hill Towns, and Matthew Tool, Inter- preter, made to Captain Patrick Jack, of the Province of Pennsylvania, is recorded in Register's office of Knox county. It purports to have been made at a council held at Tennessee river, March 1, 1757 ; and the consideration is four hundred dollars, and conveys to Captain Jack fifteen miles square south of Tennessee river. The grant itself, confirmatory of the purchase by Jack, is dated at a General Council met at Catawba river, May 7, 1762, and is witnessed by Nathaniel Alexander.
-
69
UMITH EXPLORES THE CUMBERLAND.
for the next several years continued to make fall hunts on Rockcastle river, near the Crab-Orchard, in Kentucky.
Daniel Boon, who still lived on the Yadkin, though he had
1764
previously hunted on the western waters, came again
( this year to explore the country, being employed for this purpose by Henderson & Company. With him came Samuel Callaway, his kinsman, and the ancestor of the re- spectable family of that name, pioneers of Tennessee, Ken- tucky and Missouri. Callaway was at the side of Boon when, approaching the spurs of the Cumberland Mountain, and in view of the vast herds of buffalo grazing in the vallies be- tween them, he exclaimed, "I am richer than the man men- tioned in scripture, who owned the cattle on a thousand hills-I own the wild beasts of more than a thousand val- lies."
After Boon and Callaway, came another hunter, Henry Scaggins, who was also employed by Henderson. He extend- ed his exploration to the Lower Cumberland, and fixed his sta- tion at Mansco's Lick.
"About the last of June, 1766, Col. James Smith set off to explore the § great body of rich lands, which, by conversing with the Indians,
1766 he understood to be between the Ohio and Cherokee rivers, and lately ceded by a treaty made with Sir William Johnston, to the King of Great Britain. He went, in the first place, to Holston river, and thence travelled westwardly in company with Joshua Horton, Uriah Stone and William Baker, who came from Carlisle, Pa.,-four in all-and a slave, aged 18, belonging to Horton. They explored the country south of Kentucky, and no vestige of a white man was to be found there, more than there is now at the head of the Missouri. They also explored Cum- berland and Tennessee rivers, from Stone's river down to the Ohio. Stone's river is a branch of Cumberland, and empties into it 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 Tennessee, Col. Smith concluded to re- turn home, and the others to proceed to the Illinois. They gave to Col. . Smith the greater part of their powder and lead-amounting only to half a pound of the former, and a proportionate quantity of lead. Mr. Horton, also, left with him his slave: and Smith set off with him through the wilderness, to Carolina. Near a buffalo path, they made them a shelter ; but, fearing the Indians might pass that way and discover his fire place, he removed to a greater distance from it. After remaining there six weeks, he proceeded on his journey, and arrived in Carolina in Octo- ber. He thence travelled to Fort Chissel, and from there returned home to Coneco-Cheague, in the fall of 1767."*
* Haywood.
70
FINDLEY PASSES THROUGH EAST TENNESSEE.
This exploration of Col. Smith was, with the exception of Scaggins's, the first that had been made of the country west of Cumberland Mountain, in Tennessee, by any of the Anglo- American race. The extraordinary fertility of the soil upon the Lower Cumberland-the luxuriant cane-breaks upon the table-lands of its tributaries-its dark and variegated forest- its rich flora-its exuberant pasturage-in a word, the ex- act adaptation of the country to all the wants and purposes of a great and flourishing community, impressed the explorer with the importance of his discovery, and of its great value to such of his countrymen as should afterwards come in and possess it Not strange was it, that the recital of what he had seen during his long and perilous absence, should excite in Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, as he passed homeward, an urgent and irrepressible desire to emigrate to, and settle, this El Dorado of the West .*
During this year John Findley, a fearless Indian trader from 1767
§ North-Carolina, accompanied by several comrades, vis- ited the West. Passing through Upper East Tennes- see to the Cumberland Gap ,he continued his explorations to the Kentucky river.
Indeed, the spirit of exploration and adventure was now & mania : it had become an epidemic-numbering among its subjects every bold, fearless, daring, ambitious, intrepid back- woodsman. Companies of these, varying in number from two to forty, accumulated in rapid succession upon the border set- tlements, from the Monongahela to the Savannah, and ex- cited in the minds of the more discreet and sagacious settlers, apprehension of renewed hostilities from the now friendly na- tives of the country. They clearly foresaw that an avalanche of population, concentrating thus upon the frontier, could not be restrained from precipitating itself across an ideal line -- the feeble barrier that now separated the two races. These apprehensions were not without foundation.
" The peace of 1763 had secured to Great Britain the right of terri- torial sovereignty to the country east of the Mississippi, to which France
* Colonel Croghan, in his Journal, May 31, 1765, pasing down the Ohio river, mentions " the mouth of the river Kentucky, or Holsten's river" The head of Holston may previously have been seen, and probably was supposed to run in the direction of the Kentucky river.
71
THE KING FORBIDS WESTERN GRANTS.
had previously asserted the paramount right of territory and dominion. The change of this right of dominion, whether real or imaginary, necessa- rily facilitated the transmigration of British colonists from their Atlantic
settlements to the newly acquired territory on the western waters. * * * But the treaty of Paris had made no stipulation for the tribes who had been in alliance with France, and who claimed to be indepen- dent nations, and the real owners of the territory ceded by her. They had been no party to the treaty of peace, and they refused to be bound by any transfer which the French King should make of their country to the English. Every excursion, therefore, into their hunting grounds, was, at first, viewed with dissatisfaction and jealousy, and at a later period, resisted as an encroachment upon their rights and an invasion of their soil. This jealousy against the English colonists was the more easily excited in the minds of the Indians, as the French had always taken pains to impress upon them the inordinate desire and determina- tion of England to occupy their lands and to dispossess them of their whole country. To quiet, as far as possible, any discontent from this source, and to remove any apprehension that the British government designed to extend its jurisdiction over the territory of the Indians, the proclamation of King George was issued, Oct. 7, 1763, prohibiting all. the provincial governors from granting lands, or issuing land warrants, to be located upon any territory lying west of the mountains, or west of the sources of those streams which flow into the Atlantic, and all settle- ments by the subjects of Great Britain, west of the sources of the Atlan- tic rivers. The proclamation of the king further 'strictly enjoined and required that no private persons do presume to purchase from the In- dians any lands, &c. And that if the Indians should be inclined to dis- pose of their lands, the same shall be purchased only for us, in our name, at some general meeting or assembly of the Indians, to be held for that purpose, by the governor or commander-in-chief of our colony respectively.'"*
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.