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 7
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kept on to the station. The greater part of the officers, and not a few of the privates, gave heroic examples to cause the men to face about and give battle. Of the latter Robert Edmiston and John Morrison made conspicuous exertions. They advanced sonie paces toward the enemy, and began the battle by shooting down the foremost of them. The battle then became general. The most valiant of our people had to expose themselves almost in close quarters with the Indians to induce those men who had run too far to come toward the front and assist their comrades, and before the close of the action they generally did so.
The Indians began the attack with great fury, as if certain of victory, the foremost hallooing, "The Unacas are running; come on and scalp them." Their first effort was to break through the center of our line, and to turn the left flank at the same instant. In both they failed of success by the well-directed fire of our ri- flemen. Several of their chief warriors fell, and at length their commander was dangerously wounded. This decided the con- test. The enemy immediately betook themselves to flight, leav- ing twenty-six of their boldest warriors dead on the field of battle. The blood of the wounded could be traced in great profusion in the direction of the enemy's retreat. Our men pursued in a cau- tious manner, lest they might be led into an ambuscade, hardly crediting their own senses that so numerous a foe was completely routed. In this miracle of a battle we had not a man killed, and only five wounded, who all recovered. But the wounded of the enemy died till the whole loss in killed amounted to upward of forty. The battle lasted not more than ten minutes after the line was completely formed and engaged, before the Indians be- gan to retreat; but they continued to fight awhile in that way to get the wounded off the ground. The firing during the time of the action, particularly on the side of the white people, was very lively and well directed. This battle was fought in the month of July, 1776. The consequences of victory were of some impor- tance to the Western inhabitants, otherwise than the destroying of a number of their influential and most vindictive enemies, and lessening the hostile spirit of the Cherokees. It induced a concord and union of principle to resist the tyranny of the Brit- ish Government. It attracted the favor and attention of the new commonwealth. It inspired military ideas and a contempt of danger from our savage enemies. The inquiry afterward,
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when in search of Indians, was not, "How many of them are there?" but, "Where are they to be found?" This spirit was kept up, and displayed itself on several important occasions dur- ing the war.
On the same day that the battle was fought at the Flats, an- other body of Cherokees, who came up the Nolichucky under the command of Old Abraham, of Chilhowee, attacked the fort at Watauga, in which were James Robertson ( who commanded), Capt. Sevier, Greer, and others-forty in all. In the morning at sunrise they made the attack, and were repulsed by the fire from the fort with some loss. From that time they skulked around the fort for three weeks, till a party from Virginia came to the relief of the garrison. At Watauga the Indians took Mrs. Bean prisoner. Those who were pent up in the fort sent couriers to inform those at Heaton's Station of the dangers that encom- passed them. Col. Russell was ordered, with five companies of militia, to go to their assistance. But he was so dilatory, and the circumstances so pressing, that Col. Shelby, raising about one hundred men, went with them over to Watauga, where they found the inhabitants very secure in their fort, the Indians hav- ing retreated. In the interim Col. Russell arrived at Shelby's Station, and held a council of war to determine whether they should go to Watauga or the lower frontiers. A majority de- cided in favor of going to Watauga.
During the time they were about the fort the Indians killed James Cooper and son and a man by the name of Tucker. They made captive a boy by the name of Moore, whom they led to one of their towns and burned. About the same time they ran up to Wommack's fort, and killed a man. A third body of Indians, commanded by The Raven, came up Carter's Valley. Finding the people alarmed and shut up in forts, they retreated, and went home. No force was opposed to a party of Indians which came up the Clinch. They destroyed and bore down all before them. Dividing themselves into small squadrons, they visited with fire and the tomahawk the whole country, from the lower end of what is now Sullivan County to the Seven Mile Ford in Virginia. The inhabitants were all shut up in forts, and massacres were committed every day. The government of Vir- ginia, indignant at aggressions so unprovoked and so offensive, soon acted in a manner suitable to her exalted sense of national 5
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honor. Col. William Christian was ordered to raise men, and to march them into the heart of the Cherokee settlements. The place of rendezvous was the Great Island of the Holston. This service was entered upon with the greatest alacrity, and so active were the exertions of the officers and men that several companies were at the Long Island of the Holston by the 1st of August. This movement drove the enemy from the settlements. By the last of August Col. Williams and Maj. Joseph Winston, from North Carolina, joined the Virginians with three or four hundred men. The whole army soon took up the line of march for the Chero- kee towns. Crossing the Holston at the Great Islands, they en- camped at the Double Springs, on the head waters of Lick Creek, about eight miles from the Great Island. There the army remained several days. It was joined by troops from Wa- tauga, below the Double Licks on Lick Creek, five or six miles be- low the head of the creek. The commanding officer sent off six- teen spies to go to the crossing of the French Broad River, the Indians having boasted that they would stop the army at the mouth of Lick Creek. There was a pass for the army through a canebrake and swampy ground for one mile. The army marched, nevertheless, and encamped on the other side. The baggage and bullocks did not get through till midnight. Alex- ander Harlin came that night to the army, and informed Col. Christian that a body of three thousand warriors lay encamped on the French Broad River, and would certainly there dispute his passage. He was ordered into camp with the spies. In the morning, every thing being ready for marching, the colonel called Harlin, and told him to inform the Indians that he (Col. Christian) would cross the French Broad and Tennessee both before he stopped. The army consisted of eighteen hundred men, including pack-horse men and bullock drivers, all armed. The troops marched to the French Broad, set the pioneers to work, and kindled large fires. Some time in the night a detach- ment of eleven hundred men crossed the river three miles below the encampment. The weather was cold, and the troops in cross- ing, getting wet, suffered considerably. The next morning the main body crossed the French Broad River, near the Big Island. They marched in order of battle, supposing that the enemy were now between the main body and the detachment in their rear. To the great surprise of the army, there were no marks of the
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Indians having been there for several weeks. The army halted here that day, and on the next, in the morning, resumed its march for the Tennessee. It crossed the Tennessee near Tellico Block-house. When the troops came within seven miles of the Tennessee, the colonel called to the reserve companies to follow him in a run till they came to the river; and, pushing through, they took possession of a town called Tamotlee. The army and baggage and all that belonged to the army got safely over before night. The next morning they marched to the Great Island Town, and tarried there nineteen or twenty days. In that time the Indians sued for peace, and it was granted; but not to take place till the month of May following. Hostilities were to cease in the meantime on both sides, except as to two towns on the Tennessee, in the mountains, which had burned a prisoner. The troops, before the suspension of hostilities, burned Neowee, Tel- lico, and Chilhowee; and they then burned the excepted town, Tuskega, where the Indians had lately burned the boy by the name of Moore they had taken at Watauga. The other except- ed town was reduced to ashes. . The army then marched to Chota, and, recrossing the Tennessee at the Virginia Ford, returned. .
About the same time Brig :- Gen. Rutherford, with an army raised in the district of Salisbury, in North Carolina, consisting of twenty-four hundred men, passed the French Broad at the mouth of the Swannanoe, and thence penetrated by a road since distinguished as Rutherford's Trace into the Middle Settle- ments and valley towns. He destroyed thirty-six towns and vil- lages, cut up and wasted the standing and gathered corn, and drove off and destroyed all the flocks of domestic animals that could be found. At the same time a third division, commanded by Col. Williamson, from South Carolina, and consisting of a powerful force, penetrated the settlements bordering on the Keowee, and destroyed the Seneca towns, at that time very nu- merous; wasting the Cherokee country as far as the Unaca Mountain, sparing or razing towns at his will. A fourth divis- ion, under the command of Col. Leonard McBury, entered the settlements on the Tugulo, and, having defeated the Indians, destroyed all their towns on the river. The Indians were not all of them sincerely willing to be at peace; parts of the nation were in very ill humor, and greatly excited the apprehensions of their neighbors.
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Ou the 31st of March, 1777, Col. Arthur Campbell, at Fort Patrick Henry, directed Capt. Robertson, on account of the weakness of the settlements below the fort, and on account of the danger to which they might soon be exposed, to assemble the settlers in one or two places, and not more; and he recom- mended Rice's and Patten's mills as the most proper ones. "Let your company be at Rice's," said he, "and Capt. Christian may come to the other mill." He requested a list of the set- tlers' names, that he might know their strength and give such further orders as should be necessary. These orders Capt. Rob- ertson received soon after his return from Wake County, in North Carolina, whither he had gone in the winter of 1776-77, to adjust his unsettled business there, and to receive from Col. Michael Rogers, as guardian of his brother Mark, the legacies and personal estate which he was entitled to under the will of their father. Col. Campbell held his commission under the State of Virginia, and he assumed the command of the Watauga settlements because at that time he supposed them to be within the limits of Virginia.
In May, 1777, at the Long Island of the Holston, a treaty was held with the Indians by commissioners on the part of North Carolina and Virginia-on the part of North Carolina, Waight- still Avery, Joseph Winston, and Robert Lanier; and on the part of Virginia, Col. Preston, Col. Christian, and Col. Evan Shelby. They established Brown's line as the boundary between the Indians and white people, which in 1778 was inserted as such in an act of the General Assembly of North Carolina passed in this year. They transmitted the treaty to the fall session of 1777, though no record was made of it, nor any formal ratifica- tion; but the boundaries were secured to and recognized in the public act aforesaid, as established by treaty. Several mas- sacres having been committed by the Indians during the sus- pension of hostilities, the commissioners accused them of the perpetration of these acts and reproached them with a breach of faith. They laid them to the charge of the Chickamaugas, the name by which those Cherokees have been called who set- tled on the creek of that name, with "Dragging Canoe" refus- ing to accept peace on the terms which Col. Christian had of- fered. The treaty, proceeded, however, and the Indians resigned their lands as far as to the mouth of Cloud's Creek. The com-
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missioners agreed to give them two hundred cows and calves and a large number of sheep, which, at the request of the In- dians, were exchanged for goods; and the articles of the treaty were accommodated to the exchange. The Virginia commis- sioners signed the treaty, but those from North Carolina refused to do so, no doubt believing at the time that the greater part of the settlements were in Virginia. The delivery of the goods and cattle was of course made by the government of Virginia.
In the month of April, 1777, the Assembly of North Carolina passed an act for the encouragement of the militia and volun- teers in prosecuting the remnant of the war with that part of the Cherokees which yet kept up hostilities. At the same time they passed an act for the establishment of courts of pleas and quarter sessions, and also for appointing and commissioning justices of the peace and sheriff's for the several courts in the district of Washington, in this State.
In the month of November, of the year 1777, the Assembly of North Carolina erected the district of Washington into a county, giving it the same boundaries as had been assigned to the district of Washington: "Beginning at the north-westwardly point of the county of Wilkes, on the Virginia line; thence with the line of Wilkes County to a point twenty-six miles south of the Virginia line; thence due west to the ridge of the Great Iron Mountain, which heretofore divided the hunting-grounds of the Overhill Cherokees from those of the Middle Settlements and valley; thence running a southwardly course along the side ridge to the Unaca Mountain, where the trading path crosses the same from the valley to the Overhills; thence south with the line of this State, adjoining the State of South Carolina; thence due west to the great river Mississippi; thence up the same riv- er to a point due west from the beginning." They also, at the same session, appointed commissioners to lay off and mark a road from the court-house in the county of Washington through the mountains into the county of Burke. At the same time the land office was opened, amongst others, for the county of Wash- ington, at the rate of forty shillings per hundred acres. Each head of a family was permitted to take up six hundred and forty acres himself, and one hundred acres for his wife and each of his children. The law was so worded as not to oblige the Watauga people to enter and pay for their occupancies till January, 1779;
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and then for any surplus entered above the quantity before men- tioned the purchaser was required to pay £5 per hundred acres. Great numbers of persons came to Holston from the eastern parts of North Carolina to enter land. Those who had made locations would not sell them, and the entries could not be made without them.
The militia of Washington were all in the service of the State, under the provisions of the law just mentioned "for encourag- ing the militia and volunteers to prosecute the war against the Indians," and they continued in service the greater part of the year. By their pay they were enabled, when the land office was opened, to purchase the lands which they wished to secure. The land jobbers from below could only obtain a few locations from the Indian traders, and returned home exceedingly dis- pleased. Their clamors were sonorous and grievous, and com- municated to the Assembly the feelings of the complainants. They, in April, 1778, declared void all entries of land which had been made in the counties of Burke and Washington, within the Indian boundaries, and ordered the entry-takers for those coun- ties to refund to the proper persons all moneys by thein received for such entries. The outery which the disappointed land job- bers made was loud and vehement against those who had entered lands in the county of Washington, charging them with having covered the Indian towns with their entries in numerous instances, and with an exclusive connection formed between them and some of the most influential characters of that day in the interior. The Assembly, in this crisis of fermentation, recollected the Long Isl- and treaty of 1777, recurred to it, and included it in one of their acts, to show where was the Indian boundary which should not be transcended. It is not intended to censure their conduct on this occasion, but here is a proper opportunity offered for a remark which ought not to be omitted. Public legislative bodies are eas_ ily excited by misrepresentations, which are sometimes artfully fabricated with design to precipitate them into rash measures, and thus to accomplish the purposes of the contriver. When there is no other branch of the government to curb their excess- es, it behooves a member of prudence to moderate his temper, and to delay the ultimate decision as long as possible, in order to give time for passion to subside and reason to resume her place. He who learns thus to act with dexterity has acquired a
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very essential part of that learning which qualifies for the per- formance of legislative duties.
Through the year 1777 scouting parties of Indians upon the frontiers occasionally killed and plundered the inhabitants, and wore pursued by the rangers on the frontiers who were placed there by the government to scour them, and to pursue and dis- perse small companies of ill-disposed Indians who might be found hovering on the borders of the settlements. So well were the frontiers guarded by the militia kept in actual service by the State of North Carolina that the Indians for some time consid- ered their incursions as perilous to themselves as they could be- to the white inhabitants, and for a great part of the year 17783 forbore to make them. But in this year, a part of the militia- being disbanded and their vigilance relaxed, Indian depredations and massacres soon recommenced, and in addition to the evils which they inflicted the horse-thieves and tories had become so numerous that they did not scruple to boast of their superior strength, and to threaten destruction to every one who should oppose them. The better disposed part of the community met and chose a committee to take such measures as they might think proper to suppress the lawless band. The committee met in November, and appointed two companies of thirty men each to patrol the whole country, and to put to death every suspicious character who attempted to oppose them and should refuse to give security for his appearance before the next committee in December. Six or seven leaders of the horse-thieves were shot, and others bound over to appear before the committee, who fined some heavily, according to their crimes, and ordered others who were unable to pay to receive corporal punishment in the same proportion. By these measures the country in less than two months was placed in a state of quietude and safety, and those severe punishments ceased entirely. All those tories joined the enemy's standard as soon as he approached the mountains, and the country became happily freed from their presence.
Gov. Caswell calculated that when the militia were withdrawn the Indians might be kept in peace by the good offices of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs. To that end, on the 16th of October, 1778, he transmitted his written instructions to Capt .. Robertson, stating to him that, in pursuance of a resolution by the General Assembly, the Governor had made a talk for
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"Raven of Chota" and his nation, to be delivered, according to the resolution, by Col. McDowell and Maj. Robertson. He ac- knowledged the receipt of a former letter from Capt. Robert- son, with the talk of Savanuca. "Let him know," said he, "that I am pleased with it, and wish to keep up a friendly correspond- ence with him; that I shall use every means in my power to keep the peace between us free from the least breach, and that ade- quate punishment shall be inflicted on all offenders against it. If any of their people be kept in captivity by our people, I shall be glad to be informed where they shall be restored." The Governor further informed Capt. Robertson that the resolution before mentioned had also directed that Capt. Robertson, as su- perintendent, in order to render that service to the State which was expected, should reside in the Cherokee Nation during his continuance in office.
Early in the year 1779 "Dragging Canoe" and his party at Chickamauga had become very numerous and composed a banditti of more than one thousand warriors, collected from al- most every hostile tribe on the waters of the Ohio and from the Chickamauga. They committed more depredations on the front- iers from Georgia to Pennsylvania than all other hostile tribes of Indians together; so that the two governments of North Caro- lina and Virginia in conjunction ordered a strong expedition against them, under the command of Col. Evan Shelby, of one thousand men, composed of militia from the two States, and a regiment of twelve months' men, under the command of Col. John Montgomery, destined to re-enforce Gen. Clarke at the Illi- nois, who had taken possession of that place the fall preceding. At this period the two governments were much straitened in their resources, on account of the existing War of the Revolu- tion, and were unable to make any advances for supplies or furnish transportation necessary for this campaign. All these were procured by the indefatigable exertions and on the individ- ual responsibility of Isaac Shelby. The army rendezvoused at the mouth of Big Creek, about four miles above where Rogers- ville, in Hawkins County, now stands, and embarked in pirogues and canoes, about the 10th of April, from that place. The troops descended so rapidly as completely to surprise the enemy, who fled in all directions to the hills and mountains without giving battle. The whites pursued, and hunted them in the woods and
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killed upward of forty of them, burned their towns, and de- stroyed their corn and every article of provision, and drove away their great stocks of cattle. This event happened at the time when Gen. Clarke captured the British Governor, Hamilton, and his suite at Vincennes, to which place he had advanced from De- troit, with the avowed intention of forming a grand coalition be- tween all the Southern and Northern tribes of Indians, to be aided by British regulars, who were to advance as soon as the season opened for active movements, and were to drive all the settlers from the Western waters. But the two occurrences last men- tioned gave peace to the Western settlements during the sum- mer and fall of that year. And during this interval such a current of population poured into Kentucky and into the settle- ments on the Holston as gave a permanency to the establish- ments in the two countries which no efforts of the Indians and British could ever break up. This service being performed, Evan Shelby ordered the troops to return home, marching on foot by land. They were in great want of provisions, which could only be procured by hunting and killing game. As they returned a part of them came by the place now called the Post Oak Springs, in Roane County, crossed Emmery's River just above the mouth, Clinch River not far above the mouth, and the Holston some distance above the mouth of the French Broad. Mr. Dowdy on his return found a lead mine, the particulars rel- ative to which he will not detail.
The Assembly of North Carolina, in their October session, 1779, which terminated some time in the following months of November or December, erected the county of Sullivan. The act for that purpose recites the then late.extension of the north- ern boundary line of the State, saying that it had never until lately been extended by actual survey farther than to that part of the Holston River that lies directly west from a place well known by the name of Steep Rock. And it says that all the lands westward of the said place, lying on the north and north- west side of the said River Holston, have, by mistake of the settlers, been held and deemed to be in the State of Virginia, owing to which mistake they have not entered the said lands in the proper offices. It recites also that by a line lately run (meaning, without doubt, that run by Henderson and Walker) it appears that a number of such settlers have fallen into this
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State. It makes provision for securing their lands, plantations, and improvements. Sullivan County is made to begin on Steep Rock; thence along the dividing ridge that separates the wa- ters of the Great Kanawha and Tennessee, to the head of In- dian Creek; thence along the ridge that divides the waters of the Holston and Watauga; thence in a direct line to the high- est part of Chimney Top Mountain, at the Indian boundary. Sullivan County is that part of Washington County which late- ly was on the north side of the line. Isaac Shelby was appoint- ed to command the regiment of militia in this county.
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