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 5
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preparations to force them into repentance for their deser- tion. He levied a formidable army. They sent commissioners to treat with him; he ordered them into the rear of his army, under guard for their safety, as was pretended. After arriving at the place of destination, they were shut up together in a hut. The Indians agreed that their chiefs should be retained as host- ages until an equal number of those who had slain the inhabit- ants on the frontiers should be given up in exchange for them, and it was further agreed that the Cherokees should seize and deliver up every white or red man coming into their country who should endeavor to instigate them to war against the En- glish colonists. The hostages were left prisoners in Fort St. George. No sooner had the army retired than the Cherokees attempted by stratagem the release of the hostages. On the 16th of February, 1760, two Indian women appeared at Keowee, on the other side of the river. Mr. Doherty went out, and accosting them, asked what news? Oconnestota joined them, pretend- ing some matter of business; he drew from the fort several of the officers to converse with him. He requested a white man to go with him as a guide to the Governor, and they promised to give him a guide. He then said he would go and catch his horse, and threw his bridle three times around his head. At this sig- nal twenty-five or thirty muskets were fired upon the officers from different ambuscades. One of them was mortally wound- ed, and the others of them less dangerously. The officer high- est in command in the fort, Ensign Milne, ordered the soldiers to shackle the hostages. They resisted, and killed one man on the spot, whereupon the garrison fell upon and killed every man of the hostages. In the night the fort was attacked, but with- out effect. A bottle of poison was found with one of the dead hostages, probably intended to be dropped into the well; and several tomahawks were found buried in the earth.
On the 3d of March, 1760, the Indians, to the number of two hundred, assaulted with musketry the fort at Ninety-six, but made not the least impression; and were obliged to retire with loss, burning and ravaging all the plantations within their reach on the frontiers of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virgin- ia, and, as usual, committed the most shocking barbarities.
Col. Montgomery, with a detachment of regular troops, joined by a number of provincials raised in South Carolina, entered
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the Cherokee country and destroyed all their lower towns. The Cherokees met him near the village of Etchoe, and treated him so rudely that, though he claimed the victory, he retreated to Fort St. George, whence he shortly afterward went to New York. The Cherokees, on his departure from the country, in the same year, 1760, invested Fort Loudon. Fort Loudon stood on the north side of the Little Tennessee, and about one mile above the mouth of Tellico, in the center of what then constituted the Cherokee country. They besieged it till the want of provisions compelled the garrison to accept the terms offered to them. These were a safe retreat to the settlements beyond the Blue Ridge. In pursuance of the agreement, the white people, after throwing into the river their cannon, with their small-arms and ammunition, except what was necessary for hunting, broke up the fort, and commenced their march to the settlements in South Carolina. They were suffered to proceed without molestation about twenty or twenty-two miles, to what is now called Katy Harlin's Reserve. At this place, about day-break, the Indians fell upon and destroyed the whole troop-men, women, and chil- dren-except three men-Jack, Stuart, and Thomas-who were saved by the friendly exertions of the Indian chief called the Little Carpenter; except, also, six men who were in the advance guard, and who escaped into the white settlements. The sur- render of the fort took place about the 7th of August, 1760. I. Christie, one of the six men who thus escaped, is yet alive, and resides among the Cherokees. It is said that between two and three hundred men, besides women and children, perished in this massacre. The Indians made a fence of their bones, but after the close of the war they were, by the advice of Conostota, king of the Overhill Cherokees, removed and buried for fear of stirring afresh the hostility of the English traders, who began again to visit them.
Canada being conquered in 1760, troops could now be spared for the relief of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, on whose frontiers the Indian war raged in the most terrific forms.
Early in June, 1761, Col. Grant, with a strong detachment of regular troops, aided by the South Carolina Provincials and friendly Indians who had joined him, marched from Fort Prince George for the Cherokee towns. Near the battle-ground of the
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last year the Indians met and fought him. The action com- menced about eight o'clock in the morning and continued until about eleven, when the Cherokees began to give way. They were pursued, and a scattering fire was kept up for five hours, after which Grant marched to Etchoe and burned it, as he did all the towns in the Middle Settlement. Their houses and their corn-fields were destroyed, and the whole country laid waste. The Cherokees sued for peace, and in the summer of 1761 the war was put to an end by a treaty of peace. In the course of the war the settlements around Fort Loudon, which were the only settlements of white people in what is now the State of Tennessee, were entirely broken up.
In the year 1761, as soon as the state of Indian affairs would admit of hunting with safety in the wilderness, certain persons, chiefly of Virginia, hearing of the abundance of game with which the woods were stocked on the Western waters, and al- lured 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 val- ley now called Carter's Valley, in East Tennessee. Part of these men came from Pennsylvania, the greater part from sey- eral counties in Virginia, contiguous to each other.
Daniel Boone came from the Yadkin, in North Carolina, at the head of one of these companies, and traveled with them till they came as low as the place where Abingdon now stands, and there left them. Wallen and his associates went through the Mockason Gap, in Clinch Mountain; and established a station on Wallen's Creek, which runs into Powell's River, now in Lee County, Va. There they hunted eighteen months. They named Powell's Mountain from seeing the name, "Ambrose Powell," inscribed on a tree near the mouth of Wallen's Creek, on Pow- ell's River. From the name given to the mountain they called the river "Powell's River " and the valley "Powell's Valley," names they have ever since retained. They named Clinch River and Clinch Mountain from the following circumstance: An Irishman was one of the company; in crossing the river he fell from the raft into it, and cried out, "Clinch me! clinch me!" meaning, lay hold of me. The rest of the company, unused to the phrase, amused themselves at the expense of the poor Irish- man, and called the river Clinch. They named the Copper
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Ridge from minerals of copperas appearance, which they found upon it; Newman's Ridge after a man of that name, who was one of the company; Wallen's Ridge from the name of Wallen, one of the company; also Scaggs's Ridge from a person of that name, who was one of the company. They then went through Cumberland Gap, and, when there, agreed that Wallen should name the mountain. He, having come from Cumberland County. Va., gave it the name of Cumberland Mountain. They proceeded to the river now called Cumber- land, and called it North Cumberland. Fourteen miles farther was the Laurel Mountain, where they terminated their journey, having met with a body of Indians whom they supposed to be Shawnees.
On the south of Rogersville, toward the southern boundary, is the Paint Mountain, bearing S. 60° W., and the Nolichucky, which runs into the French Broad. The next mountain is Bay's Mountain, in the same direction; next . Holston; then Clinch Mountain; next Copper Ridge, Clinch River, Newman's Ridge, Powell's Mountain, and then to Virginia. Cumberland Mount- ain bears N. 46° E., and between the Laurel Mountain and the Cumberland Mountain the Cumberland River breaks through the latter. At the point where it breaks through in the State of Kentucky, and about ten miles north of the State line, is a creek called Clear Creek, which discharges itself into the Cum- berland River, bearing north-east till it reaches the river. It rises between the Great Laurel Hill and the Cumberland Mount- ain. Its length is about fifteen miles. Not far from its head rises also the South Fork of the Cumberland, in the State of Kentucky, and runs westwardly.
On Clear Creek are two old furnaces, about half-way between the head and mouth of the creek, which were first discovered by hunters in the time of the first settlements made in this country. These furnaces then exhibited a very ancient appearance. About them were coals and cinders, very unlike iron cinders, as they have no marks of rust, which iron cinders are said uniformly to have in a few years. There are likewise a number of the like furnaces on the South Fork, bearing similar marks, and seeming- ly of a very ancient date.
One Swift came to East Tennessee in 1790 and 1791, and was at Bean's Station, on his way to a part of the country near which
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these furnaces are. He had with him a journal of his former transactions, by which it appeared that in 1761, 1762, and 1763, and afterward in 1767, he, two Frenchmen, and some few others had a furnace somewhere about the Red Bird Fork of the Ken- tucky River, which runs toward the Cumberland River and Mountain, north-east of the mouth of Clear Creek. He and his associates made silver in large quantities at the last-mentioned furnaces. They got the ore from a cave about three miles.from the place where his furnace stood. The Indians becoming troublesome, he went off, and the Frenchmen who were with him went toward the place now called Nashville. Swift was de- terred from the prosecution of his last journey by the reports he heard of Indian hostility, and returned home, leaving his journal in the possession of Mrs. Renfro. The furnaces on Clear Creek, and those on the South Fork of the Cumberland, were made either before or since the time when Swift worked his. The walls of these furnaces, and horn buttons of Euro- pean manufacture found in a rock house, prove that Europeans erected them. It is probable, therefore, that the French, when they claimed the country to the Alleghanies in 1754 and prior to that time, and afterward up to 1758, erected these works. A rock house is a cavity beneath a rock jutted out from the side of a mountain, affording a cover from the weather to those who are below it. In one of these was found a furnace and human bones and horn buttons, supposed to have been a part of the dress which had been buried with the body to which the bones belonged. It is probable that the French who were with Swift showed him the place where the ore was.
When the regiment, under the command of Col. Bird, marched from Virginia to the West, the frontier settlements of that col- ony was at Fort Lewis, which stood a few miles east of the pres- ent site of Salem, which is now in Botetourt County. Vaux's Fort, higher up the Roanoake, had been then recently taken by the French and Indians, and the company, of which we have been speaking, advanced by degrees, year after year, still farther into the interior. They made their first hunt in the year 1761, in the section of country which is now called the Blevins Set- tlement, in Sullivan County. They then resided on Smith's River, a branch of Dan, dispersed over the country that is now called Patrick and Henry Counties. There were no settlers at
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that time west of the Blue Ridge, except a few men who worked at the lead mines.
The next fall, which was in 1762, they hunted on the waters of the Clinch. They crossed the Blue Ridge at the Flower Gap, New River at Jones's Ford, and the Iron Mountain at the Blue Spring Gap. They traveled down the south fork of the Holston, and then, crossing the fork of the Holston, and going to the Elk Garden, on the waters of the Clinch, they found some Indian signs. They proceeded in the same direction, crossing Clinch River to the Hunter's Valley, so named from their tray- eling to and down it. They traveled down the valley seven or eight days, about S. 60° W., to Blackwater Creek, which they named. They fixed their station-camp near the road that leads from Rogersville to Jonesville, or Lee Court-house, in Virginia. There they shot bullets into a tree to try their guns. The spot on which it stands is N. 20° W., nineteen miles from Rogers- ville, and about one mile north of the State line. Some of the company traveled down to Greasy Rock Creek, and fixed a sta- tion there. It stood about where the line now is between Clai- borne and Hawkins Counties. Here the hunters killed a great many bear, and their garments were very much besmeared with grease. At the place where they went to the creek to drink, there is a small rock descending into the water, upon which they were used to lie down and drink. The rock, like their gar- ments, became greasy, and hence the creek took the name of Greasy Rock Creek.
In the fall of the year 1763 this same company of hunters, with the exception of one or two who staid at home, went through Cumberland Gap, and hunted for the season on the Cumberland. In the fall of 1764 the Blevins connection made their fall hunt on the Rock Castle River, near the Crab Orchard, in Kentucky, and continued to hunt in the woods there for sev- eral years afterward. Daniel Boone, who then lived on the Yad- kin, came among the hunters to be informed of the geography and locography of these woods, saying he was employed to explore them by Henderson & Co. Henry Scaggins was afterward em- ployed by them to explore the country on the banks of the Cum- berland, and fixed his station at Manseo's Lick. About the last of June, 1766, Col. James Smith, late of Bourbon County, in Kentucky, set off to explore the great body of rich lands which
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by conversing with the Indians he understood to be between the Ohio and Cherokee Rivers, which the Indians had then lately ceded by treaty, made with Sir William Johnston, to the King of Great Britain. He went in the first place to the Holston River, and thence traveled westwardly, in company with Joshua Hor- ton, Uriah Stone, and. William Baker, who came from near Car- lisle-four in all-and a mulatto slave about eighteen years of age, which Mr. Horton had with him. They explored the coun- try south of Kentucky, and no vestige of any white man was to be found there, more than there now is west of the head waters of the Missouri. They also explored the Cumberland and Ten- nessee Rivers, from Stone's River down to the Ohio. Stone's River is a fourth branch of the Cumberland, and empties into it eight or ten miles above Nashville. These travelers so named it in their journal, after one of themselves, Mr. Uriah Stone; and ever since that time it has retained the name. When they came to the mouth of the Tennessee, Col. Smith concluded to return home, the others to proceed to the Illinois. They led his horse to the Illinois, as it was difficult to travel him through the mountains. They gave to Col. Smith the greater part of their ammunition, which amounted to half a pound of powder and a proportionate quantity of lead. Mr. Horton also left with him the mulatto boy, and Smith set off with him through the wilder- ness for Carolina. Near a buffalo path they made them a shel- ter; but, fearing the Indians might pass that way and discover his fire-place, he moved to a greater distance from it. After remaining there six weeks he proceeded on his journey, and ar- rived in Carolina in October. He thence traveled to Fort Chis- sell, where he left the mulatto boy at Mr. Horton's negro quar- ters. He thence proceeded to Mr. George Adams's, on Red Creek, and returned home to Conecocheague in the fall of 1767.
Attached to the regiment of Col. Bird, in the time of the French War, were Gilbert Christian and William Anderson, who were both pleased with the appearance of the country they had seen, and wished to explore it more carefully after they had re- turned from service. They engaged John Sawyer (now Col. Sawyer), of Knox County, in East Tennessee, to accompany them in this tour through the wilderness. They, in company with four others, making seven in all, in the year 1768 left the county of Augusta, in Virginia, and traveled to the waters of
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the Holston. They traversed the country from the Holston to the Clinch Mountain, and down it.
In the month of February, in the year 1769, they crossed the North Fork of the Holston at the same place where the ford now is, above the mouth of the river, and pursued their usual mode of 'traveling till they came as low as Big Creek, now in Hawkins County, where they found themselves in the hunting-grounds of a large party of Indians. They turned about and went back up the river ten or fifteen miles, and concluded to return home. After they had crossed the north fork, going home, about twen- ty miles above the crossing-place there was a cabin on every spot where the range was good, and where only six weeks before nothing was to be seen but the howling wilderness. When they passed by before, on their outward destination, they found no settlers on the waters of the Holston, save three families on the head springs of the rivers. Thus East Tennessee began to be per- manently settled in the winter of 1768-69. Ten families of these settlers came from the neighborhood of the place where Raleigh now stands, in North Carolina, and settled on the Watauga. This was the first settlement in East Tennessee. Soon after- ward it was augmented by settlers from the hollows in North Carolina and from Virginia. About the years 1768, 1769, 1770, such was the reigning fashion of the times as eminently promoted the emigration of its people from North Carolina. The trade of the country was in the hands of Scotch merchants, who came in shoals to get rich and to get consequence. The people of the country were clothed in the goods they imported, and to be dressed otherwise was scouted as a sign of barbarity and pover- ty. The poor man was treated with disdain, because unable to contribute to their emoluments. He was excluded from their society, unless when he was to be reminded of his insignificance, and to be told with brutal freedom of the low rank which he held. The rich were led into extravagant modes of living, far beyond what their incomes could support. Labor was pro- scribed as fit only for the degraded and vulgar, and every man in the country, of any standing, vied with his neighbor in the splendor of his appearance, in the expenditures of his family. and in the frivolous amusements with which he passed his time. These traders were taken for a superior class of beings; their dress was imitated, their manners, their amusements, even their
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hobbling gait and broad accent. The very women of the coun- try believed that there was no dignity but in a connection with them. The Governors of the province were alternately Scotch or English who favored their pretensions. The members of the council were chiefly Scotch, and the members of the As- sembly also. To supply the means for the expensive living which was then fashionable clerks of courts and lawyers de- manded exorbitant fees for their services. The great excellency of a clerk consisted in making out the highest bill of costs, and yet keeping within the pale of the law. All sums over forty shil- lings were sued for and recovered in courts of record. The bus- iness was immense, and the extortions of clerks, lawyers, and tax-gatherers fell with intolerable weight upon the people. Sheriffs, in the collection of taxes, exacted more than was due, and appropriated the surplus to their own use. The offenders were the men in power, who were appointed by the law to re- dress the wrongs of the people. Those who were injured met and petitioned the Legislature for relief, and made representa- tions of the malpractice which they had suffered. Their peti- tions were rejected and treated with disdain. Driven by op- pression to desperation and madness, the people rose in bodies, under the title of "Regulators."
The royal forces, under the command of Gov. Tryon, met the "Regulators" near the Great Alamance, on the 16th of May, 1771, and defeated them, killing above two hundred of them on the field of battle. Some of them were taken by the victors and hanged: others took the oath of allegiance, and returned home; others fled to Holston, where the dread of British power, at a subsequent period, made them tories. In these afflicting cir- cumstances it became necessary for men of property to come to the westward in quest of the means to repair the dilapidations of their broken fortunes, and for the poor to go somewhere in search of independence and a share of respectability, absolutely unattainable in the country of their nativity. In the wilderness beyond the mountains they were promised at least exemption from the supercilious annoyance of those who claimed a pre- eminence above them. Under these incentives, full streams of emigration began to flow in various directions from the misgov- erned province of North Carolina. The day of retribution was not far behind, and when it came in the dawn of the revolution,
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the enraged populace, ever prone to extremes, exhibited many of those models of excellence in match coats of tar and feathers, which frequently they were hardly restrained from decorating with the illumination of liquid flame. Is it meant to applaud such violence? No, but to hold it in abhorrence. Yet candor is obliged to confess that as in every other misfortune there is some speck of consolation, so also there was one in this: that if the rude fury of the people must fall somewhere, it did not upon this occasion miss the most deserving candidates for popular distinction. When the oath of allegiance to the new State gov- ernment was offered to the people of North Carolina, as a test of distinction between the friends of the new State who would take it and its enemies who would not, this whole body of men, with very few exceptions, who had so lately been the tyrants of the country, refused to take the oath and left the United States. Amongst others who had withdrawn from the oppression which they had made fashionable was Daniel Boone, from the Yadkin, who removed in 1769 or 1770; and James Robertson, from Wake County, in North Carolina, early in 1770. He is the same per- son who will appear hereafter by his actions to have merited all the eulogium, esteem, and affection which the most, ardent of his countrymen have ever bestowed upon him. Like almost all those in America who have ascended to eminent celebrity, he had not a noble lineage to boast of, nor the escutcheoned armo- rials of a splendid ancestry. But he had what was far more valuable-a sound mind, a healthy constitution, a robust frame. a love of virtue, an intrepid soul, and an emulous desire for hon- est fame. He visited the delightful country on the waters of the Holston, to view the new settlements which then began to be formed on the Watauga. When he came to the Watauga, in 1770, he found one Honeycut living in a hut, who furnished him with food for his subsistence. He made a crop this year on the Watauga. On recrossing the mountains he got lost for some time, and, coming to a precipice over which his horse could not be led, he there left him and traveled on foot. His powder was wetted by repeated showers of rain, and was so spoiled that he could not use it for the purpose of procuring game for his food. For fourteen days he wandered without eating, till he was so much reduced and weakened that he began seriously to de- spair of ever returning to his home again. But there is a prov-
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idence which rules over the destinies of men, and preserves them to run the race which is appointed for them. Unpromising as were the expectations of James Robertson at that time, having neither learning, experience, property, nor friends to give him countenance, and with spirits drooping under the pressure of penury and a low estate, yet the God of nature had given him an elevated soul, and planted in it the seeds of virtue, which made him in the midst of discouraging circumstances look forward to better times. He was accidentally met by two hunters, on whom he could not, without much and pressing solicitation, prevail so far as to be permitted to ride on one of their horses. They gave . him food, of which he ate sparingly for several days. till both his strength and spirit returned to him. This is the man who, in the sequel of this history, will figure so deservedly as the greatest benefactor of the first settlers of the country. He reached home in safety, and soon afterward returned to the Wa- tauga, with a few others, and there settled. Boone had been there at an earlier period, and was then there also. Robertson and sixteen others, in 1772, entered into a covenant with each other to purchase lands of the Indians, if they could do so upon reasonable terms. They did not complete the covenant amongst themselves, which Boone communicated to Henderson, and it eventuated in the formation of a company by Henderson, who actually made a purchase in 1774 and 1775.
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