USA > Tennessee > The civil and political history of the state of Tennessee from its earliest settlement up to the year 1796 : including the boundaries of the state > Part 11
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On Saturday, the 25th of March, 1780, the river seemed to grow wider, the current was very gentle, and they were now con- vinced that it was the Cumberland. Col. Donaldson formed a small square sail upon his vessel on the day that they left the mouth of the river, and derived much assistance from it. They were obliged to keep near the shore, in a great measure, to get the vessel along; and very often by the assistance of the trees and
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bushes near the bank. They were apprehensive that should the Indians discover their situation, a few of them might defeat the expedition and massacre the most of the crews. They threw themselves devoutly and confidently upon the protection of the Almighty. That confidence is seldom, if ever, disappointed, and it was not upon the present occasion.
On Sunday, the 26th of March, early in the morning, they continued their route up the river, and got some buffalo meat, which, though poor, was a welcome acquisition. On Monday, the 27th, they killed a swan, which was very delicious. On Tues- day, the 28th of March, they got some more buffalo meat. On Wednesday they progressed up the river, and got some herbs in the Cumberland bottom which some of the crew called Shawnee salad. They boiled it in water. It was a poor dish, and only just better than nothing. On Thursday, the 30th of March, 1780, they got some more buffalo meat, still going up the river, and there encamped on the north side. On Friday, the 31st of March, they set off early in the morning, and after run- ning some distance they came to the place where Col. Richard Henderson was encamped on the north side of the river. He, it seems, had come in company with those who had run the line to this place between North Carolina and Virginia. He gave to Col. Donaldson and his associates all the information they de- sired; and, further, he informed them that he had purchased a quantity of corn in Kentucky for the use of the Cumberland settlement. The crews were now without bread, and were obliged to hunt the buffalo and feed on his flesh.
On Saturday, the 1st of April, 1780, they still went up the river, and so did until the 12th, at which time they came to the mouth of a small river running in on the north side, and which by Moses Renfro and his company was called Red River. Up this river they determined to settle, and here they took leave of Col. Donaldson and his associates, the "Adventure" and other boats still going slowly up the river, the current becoming more rapid than it was farther down. On the 21st of April they reached the first settlement on the north side of the river, below the Big Salt Lick, which was called Eaton's Station after a man by that name, who with other families had come through Ken- tucky and settled there.
On the 24th of April, 1780, they came to the Big Salt Lick,
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where they found Capt. James Robertson and his company, and where they were gratified at meeting those friends whom but little before it was doubtful whether they should ever see or not. They there also found a few log cabins, erected by Capt. Rob- ertson and his associates on a cedar bluff on the south side of the river, at some distance from the Salt Springs. Some of those who came with Col. Donaldson, the whole of them not be- ing recollected, were Robert Cartwright and family, Benjamin Porter and family, Mary Henry ( a widow ) and her family, Mary Purnell and her family, James Cain and his family, Isaac Neely and his family, John Cotton and his family, old Mr. Rounsever and his family, Jonathan Jennings and his family, William Crutchfield and his family, Moses Renfroe and his family, Jo- seph Renfroe and his family, James Renfroe and his family, Solomon Turpin and his family, old Mr. Johns and his family, Francis Armstrong and his family, Isaac Lanier and his family, Daniel Dunham and his family, John Boyd and his family, John Montgomery and his family, John Cockrill and his family. John Donaldson and his family, John Caffrey and his family, John Donaldson, Jr., and his family, Mrs. Robertson (the wife of Capt. James Robertson), John Blackmore, and John Gibson.
Some time afterward, Col. Donaldson and his connections went up the Cumberland to Stone's River, and up it to a place now called Clover Bottom, and there built a small fort on the south side of the river. Being some time afterward incommoded by freshets, and the water rising so as to drown the fort, he re- moved to the other side of the river. About this time Dr. Walker, one of the Virginia commissioners for running the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina, arrived at the bluff. Henderson soon afterward erected a station on Stone's River, at the place called Old Fields, now Clover Bottom, and he remained there a considerable time. When he left that place for North Carolina, the station broke up, and the inhabitants re- moved to the French Lick Station. Whilst there he sold lands to divers persons, under the deed made by the Indians to him- *elf and partners in 1775. He sold one thousand acres per head, at the rate of ten dollars per thousand. When he received the money, he gave a certificate which entitled the holder at a fut- ure time to further proceeding in the land office. Col. Hender- son had two brothers with him, Nathaniel Henderson and Pleas-
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ant Henderson. The former kept a book in which were record- ed the entries of land which were purchased from the colonel, and were intended to be afterward secured to the purchasers. The right of the Indians to the soil was then much less defined and understood than at this day. It had been an established maxim of national law amongst the European monarchs who em- braced the doctrines of the Reformation that the pope had not -- as he formerly pretended-as the vicegerent of Christ and the successor of St. Peter, a right to dispose of all unsettled and in- fidel countries; but, on the contrary, that the first discoverer of such places who took possession in the name of their sovereign entitled the country of the discoverer to the dominion and soy- ereignty of the soil. Without this maxim the rights to lands within chartered limits are without a solid basis to support them. The maxim, it is true, is beyond the limits of ordinary compre- hension, and, like compensation in the case of common recovery, is founded upon a presumption which the law will not suffer to be disproved. Its best support is found in another consanguin- eous maxim, which is that "de legibus non est disputandum." The right to the soil being thus established in the community, and the right of the Indians being only usufructuary -- and that too by the favor and permission of the allodial owners, the State, or the com- munity-in consequence it follows that no individual purchase can be valid. Upon this gound it was that such purchases were forbidden, both under the regal government and by the Consti- tution of North Carolina.
When the first settlers came to this bluff in 1879-80, the country had the appearance of one which had never been cul- tivated. There were no signs of any cleared land nor other appearance of former cultivation. Nothing was presented to the eye but one large plain of woods and cane, frequented by buffaloes, elk, deer, wolves, foxes, panthers, and other animals suited to the climate. The land adjacent to the French Lick, which Mr. Mansco in 1769 called an old field, was a large, open piece, frequented and trodden by buffaloes, whose large paths led to it from all parts of the country, and there concen- tered. On these adjacent lands was no undergrowth nor cane as far as the creek reached in time of high water; or, rather, as far as the backwater reached. The country, as far as to Elk River and beyond it, had not a single permanent inhabitant ex-
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cept the wild beasts of the forest, but it had been inhabited many centuries before by a numerous population. At every last- ing spring is a large collection of graves, made in a particular way, with the heads inclined on the sides and feet stones, the whole covered with a stratum of mold and dirt about eight or ten inches deep. At many springs is the appearance of walls in- closing ancient habitations, the foundations of which were visi- ble wherever the earth was cleared and cultivated, to which walls intrenchments were sometimes added. These walls sometimes inclose six, eight, or ten acres of land; and sometimes they are more extensive. Judging from the number and frequency of these appearances, it cannot be estimated but that the former inhabitants were ten times, if not twenty times, more numerous than those who at present occupy the country. Voracious time has drawn them, with the days of other ages, into her capacious stomach, where, dissolving into aliments of oblivion, they have left to be saved from annihilation only the faint and glimmering chronicles of their former being. Were it not for the short al- phabet which we now have, possessing the wonderful power of perpetuating the existence of things in some future age, the fresh-born man of the day, traveling over the remains of our- selves, might find himself puzzled with the perplexing question: What human being formerly lived here?
Early in January, 1780, a party of about sixty Indians from the Delaware tribe came from toward Caney Fork of the Cum- berland River, and passed by the head of Mill Creek, on a branch of which they encamped, whence it has since been called Indian Creek. They thence proceeded to Bear Creek, of the Tennessee, and continued there during the summer. This is supposed to be the first party which molested the whites on the Cumberland.
CHAPTER IV.
Sevier Made Colonel Commandant of Washington in 1781-Commissioners to Treat with the Indians-Cherokees Embodied to Fall on the Frontiers-Martin Marches to the Nation-Sevier Marches to the Middle Settlements and Tuck- asejah; Killed Fifty Men; Made Prisoners Fifty Women and Children; Burned Fifteen or Twenty Towns-Sevier Attacked an Indian Camp on Indian Creek; Killed Fifteen-Indians Made Peace in the Summer of 1781-Lord Cornwal- lis-Gen. Greene-Col. Morgan-Sevier and Shelby-Resolution of the Assem- bly of North Carolina-Col. Arthur Campbell-Col. William Preston, Shelby, and Sevier March to South Carolina-Join Marion-Post near Monk's Corner Taken-Battle of Eutaw-Surrender of Lord Cornwallis-Desperation and Flight of the Tories into the Cherokee Nation-Gen. Pickens Requested of Sevier to Make the Indians Drive Them Away-The Practice of Plundering Had Greatly Increased-Severely Reprobated by Gen. Pickens-Land Office Closed by the Assembly in 1781 -- Indian Hostilities in 1782-Expedition by Se- vier to Chiccamauga, and Thence to Will's Town and Other Towns; Killed Some of the Indians; Burned Their Towns-The War of the Revolution Ended -Land Office Opened in 1783, and an Office for the Military Lands-The Western Boundary Enlarged-Hunting-grounds Reserved for the Cherokees -Greene County-Bounds of the Military Lands-John Armstrong's Office- Locality of Entries Fixed-Judicial Decisions-Surveyor of Greene County -- Settlements, Extent of, 1783.
O N the 3d of February, 1781, Gov. Nash signed a commis- sion appointing Sevier to be the Colonel Commandant of Washington County; and on the 6th of the same month Gen. Greene, by commission, authorized William Christian, William Preston, Arthur Campbell, and Joseph Martin, of Virginia; and Robert Lanier, Evan Shelby, Joseph Williams, and John Sevier, of the State of North Carolina, or any five of them, to meet com- missioners to be appointed on the part of the Cherokees and Chickasaws, for the purpose of adjusting the respective limits of each party, for exchange of prisoners, a suspension of hostil- ities, and the conclusion of peace; or any thing else, for the es- tablishment of harmony and a good understanding between the parties, subject to the confirmation of Congress. They were to observe the boundary line between North Carolina and Virginia, and to exchange such pledges for the observance of the treaty to be concluded on as might be thought necessary. And were to call on the militia to prevent future encroachments on the
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Indian lands; and to call on the Indians to appoint proper com- missioners from among themselves to go to Congress, for the obtaining of such enlargement and confirmation of the treaty as may appear to them requisite. This commission was to continue in force till revoked by the commanding officer of the Southern Department, or by Congress. Notwithstanding these overtures on the part of the United States, and severe punishment so lately inflicted upon them, the Indians had but little, if at all, abated their invincible passion for war and glory, which con- stantly agitates the savage breast.
In the month of February, in this year, Col. Joseph Martin lived upon the Long Island of the Holston, opposite to which, on the east side, was a fort, built by Col. William Christian in 1776, which was garrisoned, up to 1781, with men raised on the Holston and Watauga. In this month he received notice by the Indian traders, Grant Williams and Archibald Coody, that the Cherokees were embodied, and would be upon the frontier as soon as the latter could be prepared for them. He collected three or four hundred men at the Long Island, and marched from thence to the Indian towns. He crossed the Holston with his troops, and went to the Watauga; thence to the Nolichucky, the French Broad, Little River, the Tennessee, the Tellico, Old C'hota, and to the Tamotley. They burned and destroyed the corn belonging to the Indians, and killed some of them. They met the Indians between the Little Tennessee and the Tellico, and fought with and defeated them. They took twenty or thirty Indian prisoners, and returned home by the same route they rame. Col. Campbell arrived at the Long Island, and dis- patched runners to discover where the troops under Martin were. They met the latter returning. Col. Campbell remained at the Long Island three months, giving to the inhabitants there all the assistance in his power against the common enemy.
The Indians still persevering in their hostile course, which they had for some time pursued, a number of men to the amount of one hundred and thirty collected together, in March, 1781, in the Greasy Cove of Nolichucky River, with Col. John Sevier at their head, and marched into the Middle Settlements of the Cherokees (on the head waters of Little Tennessee River), and entered the town of Tuckasejah, where they killed fifty men, and made prisoners fifty women and children, ten of whom re-
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sided with Col. Sevier three years before they were exchanged. Then they were delivered to Col. Joseph Martin, and by him were restored to their own nation. In the vicinity of Tuckase- jah they burned fifteen or twenty towns and all the granaries or corn they could find. The whites had one man killed and one wounded, who recovered.
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In the summer of this year (1781 ) Col. Sevier attacked a camp of the Indians on Indian Creek. They had come into the neigh- borhood of the frontiers to plunder. He went from Washing- ton County with troops, supposed to be one hundred; crossed the French Broad at the War Ford; crossing, also, the Big Pig- eon at the War Ford. He arrived at their camp, and the whites made the attack. The latter surrounded the camp of the In- dians, and killed seventeen of them; the rest fled in a body, supposed to be thirty. He returned with his troops by nearly the same route. So many severe chastisements induced the In- dians to wish for peace, and it was made with them without dif- ficulty in the summer of 1781.
The year 1781 was signalized by more military action in the States of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia than had been exhibited there during the whole war. The tories were everywhere in arms, committing the most shocking barbarities. A large body of British troops pressing upon a corps of Amer- ican troops, under the command of Col. Morgan, with more pre- cipitancy than suited their circumstance and with a contempt of the annoyance which he could give them, which but little befitted the vigilance of a prudent commander, had fallen into an ambus- cade which Morgan had prepared for them, and in a moment when they expected no danger were involved in irretrievable ruin, and were compelled, to the number of nearly one thousand men, to throw down their arms and surrender themselves pris- oners. Col. Tarleton, with a small remnant only of the British troops, escaped, and fled with the utmost precipitation to the main body of the British forces, so closely followed by an Amer- ican officer of great celebrity as to render his evasion extremely difficult. Morgan, knowing the value of his prize, determined immediately to proceed with the utmost dispatch to some place in Virginia where his prisoners could be securely lodged. Lord Cornwallis followed him without the loss of a moment's time; and Gen. Greene, fearful of the consequence of permitting his
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Lordship to repossess himself of the prisoners, with equal diligence marched to join the troops under his immediate com- mand to those who were with Col. Morgan. He joined him accordingly, and was so closely followed by Lord Cornwallis that in many places on the road the van of the advancing army and the rear of the retreating army were in view at the same time. The pursuit was continued to Dan River, on the confines of Virginia; but the prisoners were advanced to a place of safe- ty, and the pursuit, no longer having an object, was discontin- ued. Gen. Greene, receiving re-enforcements both from Vir- ginia and North Carolina, became in his turn the pursuer. He followed his Lordship with cautious steps to Hillsboro, in North Carolina, and thence to Guilford Court-house, where he engaged his army for some hours, and so much disabled it as to make it necessary for them to retreat to Wilmington. Gen. Greene followed close upon their heels for some time, and at length turned off to South Carolina to drive the British outposts into Charleston and to suppress and punish the insurgent tories. Lord Cornwallis, after refreshing his troops for some time in Wilmington, marched by way of Halifax into Virginia, where by fate he was finally conducted to Little York.
While the British were thus in pursuit of Gen. Greene's army, the Assembly of North Carolina, then in session at Halifax, turned their eyes to Shelby and Sevier, and rested their hopes upon them. They resolved, on the 13th of February, that Col. Isaac Shelby, of Sullivan County, and John Sevier, Esq., of Washington County, be informed by this resolution, which shall be communicated to them, that the General Assembly of this State are feelingly impressed with the very generous and patri- otic services rendered by the inhabitants of the said counties, to which their influence has to a great degree contributed. And it was urgently urged that they would press a continuance of the same active exertion; that the state of the country was such as to call forth its utmost powers immediately, in order to preserve its freedom and independence; and that we may profit by the assist- ance of our friends in Virginia, as they have occasionally by us as emergences induced them to avail of it, we suggest our wishes that Col. Arthur Campbell and Col. William Preston, of Virginia, through the gentlemen mentioned, may be informed that their spirited conduct heretofore, in favor of the Southern States, af-
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fords us the most perfect assurance that they will make every active and effectual exertion at the present critical moment in favor of this State.
Gov. Caswell, an intimate acquaintance of Col. Shelby, de- picted to him the melancholy circumstances of his own State. A part of the British forces, under the command of Maj. Craig, to the number of four hundred, with about five hundred tories, had marched from Wilmington to Newbern, by way of Duplin, Dobbs, and Jones Counties. . They repulsed the militia in the respective counties as they passed through them, with little loss. At Newbern they destroyed all the salt, rum, sugar, and mer- chandise of every kind; burned and destroyed the few vessels which were in the harbor. From thence they marched up the Neuse road, passing by Gen. Bryant's, Capt. Heretage's, Mr. Longfield Cock's; and across by Daniel Shiner's, on the Trent, by the head of New River, and returned to Wilmington. The tories were in motion all over North Carolina, and their foot- steps were marked with blood, and their path was indicated by the most desolating devastations. Gov. Caswell conjured him to turn to the relief of his distressed country. Shelby, however, consulted his own judgment upon the course which would ren- der the most essential service to the common cause, and deter- mined to assist in clearing South Carolina of all the British and tories who were stationed at places without the precincts of Charleston.
The scenes of action were in South Carolina and Virginia. North Carolina was left to fall or be supported by the event of the transactions which were then going on. The tories, how- ever, were very indefatigable in their endeavors to enslave their country, and every day some life was sacrificed to their implaca- ble fury. A considerable body of them, under the command of Fleming, stole very unexpectedly into Hillsboro, on the 12th of September, and made prisoner Gov. Burke, with several other persons of note, and marched toward Wilmington. The Amer- ican troops succeeded in dislodging the British from nearly all the stations which they occupied beyond the limits of Charles- ton, and finally so straitened them for want of room and provis- ions as to force them to action at the Eutaw Springs, on the Sth of September, in which the American army captured five hun- dred of them and one thousand stands of arms.
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About the same time a French fleet arrived in the Chesapeake Bay, with a considerable body of land forces on board, with a view to co-operate in the reduction of Lord Cornwallis and all his troops to the surrender of themselves as prisoners of war to the armies of the United States. At this crisis, on the 16th of September, Gen. Greene wrote to Col. Sevier. He gave informa- tion to the colonel of these several events, and of the suspicions which were entertained that Lord Cornwallis would endeavor to escape by marching back through North Carolina to Charleston; to prevent which Gen. Greene begged of the colonel to bring as large a body of riffemen as he could, and as soon as possible to march them to Charleston. Col. Sevier immediately raised two hundred men in the county of Washington, and marched to the relief of the well affected in South Carolina, who were suffering extremely by the cruelties which the tories were in- flicting upon them. He joined his forces to those of Gen. Mar- ion, on the Santee, at Davis's Ferry, and contributed in no small degree to keep up resistance to the enemy, to raise the spirits of those who were friendly to the American cause, and to afford an asylum to those who were in danger from the infuri- ated tories. Lord Cornwallis was now besieged in Yorktown, and his retreat through North Carolina being no longer apprehended, and as the enemy in South Carolina were ravaging the country in the parish of St. Stephens, Gen. Greene, with a design of putting a stop to their depredations and straitening them in the articles of supplies, endeavored, on the 11th of October, to col- lect a force sufficient to drive them into Charleston; but he awaited the arrival of Sevier to begin his operations.
On the 19th Lord Cornwallis and the army under his com- mand surrendered to the arms of the United States and France. The war between the whigs and tories had grown to be a war of extermination, and quarter was neither asked nor expected on either side. Col. Shelby likewise was called down to the lower country, about the last of September, to aid in intercepting Lord Cornwallis, at that time blockaded by the French fleet in the Chesapeake, and who it was suspected would endeavor to make good his retreat through North Carolina to Charleston, but when his Lordship surrendered in Virginia both Shelby and Sevier were attached to Marion's camp below, on the Santee. Shelby and Sevier consented to this with some reluctance, as
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their men were only called out for sixty days, and Shelby was a member of the North Carolina Assembly, which was to meet at Salem in the beginning of December following. They, however, joined Marion early in November, with five hundred mounted riflemen. The enemy, at that time under Gen. Stewart, lay at a place called Ferguson's Swamp, on the great road leading to Charleston. Gen. Marion received information several weeks after their arrival at his camp that several hundred Hessians at a British post near Monks' Corner, eight or ten miles below the enemy's main army, were in a state of mutiny, and would sur- render the post to any considerable American force that might appear before it; and he soon determined to send a detachment to surprise it. Sevier and Shelby solicited a command in the detachment. Marion accordingly moved down eight or ten miles, and crossed over to the south side of the Santee River, from whence he made a detachment of five or six hundred men to surprise the post, the command of which was given to Col. Mayhem, of the South Carolina Dragoons. The detachment consisted of parts of Sevier's and Shelby's regiments, with May- hem's Dragoons-about a hundred and eighty-and twenty or thirty lowland militia. They took up the line of march early in the morning; traveled fast through the woods, crossing the main Charleston road, leaving the enemy's main army some three or four miles to the left; and on the evening of the second day again struck the road leading to Charleston, about two miles be- low the enemy's post which they intended to surprise. They lay upon their arms all night across the road, to intercept the . Hessians, in case the enemy had got notice of their approach and had ordered those Hessians to Charleston before morning.
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