USA > Virginia > Washington County > Washington County > History of southwest Virginia, 1746-1786, Washington County, 1777-1870 > Part 3
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The Indian tribes that molested the early settlers in this section were the Cherokees and the Shawnese.
Adair, an early Indian trader, and later historian, in describing the Indian and his passion for revenge, says :
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Southwest Virginia, 1746-1786.
"I have known them to go a thousand miles for the purpose of revenge, in pathless woods, over hills and mountains, through large cane swamps full of grape-vines and briars, over broad lakes, rapid rivers and deep creeks and all the way endangered by poisonous snakes, if not by the rambling and lurking enemy, while, at the same time, they were exposed to the extremities of the heat and cold, the vicissitudes of the season, to hunger and thirst, both by chance and their religiously scanty method of living when at war, to fatigue and other difficulties. Such is their revengeful temper that all these things they contemn as imaginary trifles, if they are so happy as to get the scalp of their enemy."
And this record is preserved by a man who spoke from his experience with the Cherokee Indians, the one tribe that gave the early settlers of this section more trouble than all the Indian tribes combined.
CHEROKEES.
The Cherokee tribe of Indians, at the time of the settlement of Southwest Virginia, inhabited one of the most attractive sections of the American Continent, occupying the banks of the Catawba, Savannah, Yadkin and Tennessee rivers on the east and south and several of the feeders of the Tennessee on the west.
There were no fortresses to be found among them. Their settle- ments were rude huts scattered irregularly along some water way convenient to good pasture land and hunting and fishing grounds.
They usually had small clearings which were cultivated by the women and children in Indian corn and beans.
But little of the history of the Cherokees can be gathered from their traditions. The existence of this tribe of Indians was noted by the historian of the expedition of De Soto when traveling in the South, and it is said that they came originally from east of the Alleghany mountains. Their principal town or capital city was Choto, located about five miles from the ruins of Fort Loudon, in Tennessee.
They were the mountain people of America and loved their homes and their liberties.
They frequently aided the early settlers of this portion of America in their wars with the French and English, a company of Indians from this tribe having participated in the siege of Fort Du Quesne
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Southwest Virginia, 1746-1786.
under Captain Pearis, but much oftener did they carry death into the homes of the early settlers of the Carolinas and Virginia.
This tribe, previous to 1769, were numerous and exceedingly quarrelsome and arrogant.
At this time they quarreled with the Chickasaw Indians and undertook an invasion of their country, but were overwhelmed by the Chickasaws after a great battle at the Chickasaw old fields.
This overwhelming defeat occurred at the same time that Arthur Campbell, William Edmiston, and many other hardy pioneers first pitched their tents on the waters of the Holston and Clinch, and there can be no doubt that this occurrence contributed much to the rapid settlement of this section of Virginia.
For thirty years following the advent of the first settlers into this country the Cherokees killed and scalped the inhabitants at every opportunity.
The population of this tribe in 1735 was considerable. Adair says that they had sixty-four populous towns, and their fighting men numbered above six thousand.
In the year 1776 the number of warriors pertaining to this tribe was two thousand four hundred and ninety-one.
This tribe of Indians now occupy a part of the Indian Territory. It will be remembered that the Cherokees used principally the val- leys of the Holston in their hunting expeditions and seldom visited the valleys of the Clinch.
SHAWNESE.
But little can be said of this Indian tribe save that it was known as a wandering nation.
At times in their history they occupied territory in almost all sections of the country east of the Mississippi river and south of the Lakes, but at the time when this tribe gave trouble to our ancestors their homes were on the Wabash and Miami rivers, where they built many villages. Their principal town, called "Piquo," was the birthplace of the great Tecumseh.
This tribe had a tradition respecting their origin. They believed their fathers crossed the ocean from the East under the guidance of a leader of the Turtle tribe, one of their original subdivisions, and that they walked into the sea, the waters of which parted, and thus passed over on the bottom to this land.
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Southwest Virginia, 1746-1786.
This tribe of Indians were responsible for many of the murders and outrages suffered by the early settlers on the Clinch and many times on the Holston, the Indians coming by the trails through Cumberland Gap and the trails coming into Tazewell county pre- viously described.
The population of this tribe in 1735 did not, according to Adair, exceed four hundred and fifty souls.
This tribe of Indians assisted the British in the wars of 1776 and 1812, and in the latter struggle did effective service for their British allies.
In 1817 they ceded their lands in Ohio to the United States and were soon confined to a small reservation west of the Mississippi river.
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Southwest Virginia, 1746-1786.
CHAPTER III
EARLY EXPLORATIONS OF SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA BY THE WHITE
MAN.
From the time of the first settlement at Jamestown in 1607, the English Colony had grown rapidly and had expanded until their western borders were in view of the Blue Ridge. With the usual vigor and enterprise of the Anglo-Saxon, we find, in the year 1641, a number of the citizens of Virginia petitioning the House of Bur- gesses for permission to undertake the discovery of a new river of land west and southerly from the Appomattox, and, in March, 1642, we find the House of Burgesses passing an act granting such per- mission. The act is as follows :
"Forasmuch as Walker Austin, Rice Hoe, Joseph Johnson and Walter Chiles, for themselves and such others as they shall think fitt to joyn with them, did petition in the Assembly in June 1641 for leave and encouragement to undertake the discovery of a new river of unknowne land bearing west southerly from Appomattake river, Be it enacted and confirmed, that they and every one of them and whom they shall admit shall enjoy and possess to them, their heirs, executors, administrators or assigns all profit whatsoever they in their particular adventure can make unto themselves by such discovery aforesaid, for fourteen years after the date of the said month of January, 1641, provided there be reserved and paid into his Majesty's use by them that shall be appointed to receive them, the fifth part of Royal Mines whatsoever ; provided also, that if they shall think fit to employ more than two or three men in the said discovery they shall then do it by commission from the Governor of the Councill."*
It is well to preserve this the earliest known evidence of the desire of any man to hunt out the very country we now occupy.
The names of a portion of these first daring spirits, Austin, John- son and Chiles, afterwards became familiar to our own country, and while no evidence is at hand to establish the fact, yet it is more than probable that these men by their efforts made possible the future success of Walker, Draper, Inglis, Wood, and others.
*1 Hen. Stat., p. 262.
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Southwest Virginia, 1746-1786.
The record of the next effort to reach this portion of the wilder- ness by the enterprising citizens of Eastern Virginia is to be found in an act of the House of Burgesses of Virginia passed in July, 1653, more than a hundred years before a permanent settlement was effected on the waters of the Clinch or Holston rivers.
The Act is as follows. Passed July, 1653 :
"Whereas, an act was made in the Assembly, 1642, for encour- agement of discoveries to the westward and southward of this country, granting them all profits arising thereby for fourteen years, which act is since discontinued and made void, it is by this Assembly ordered that Colonel William Clayborne, Esq., and Captain Henry Fleet, they and their associates with them, either jointly or severally, may discover, and shall enjoy such benefits, profits and trades for fourteen years as they shall find out in places where no English ever have been and discovered, nor have had par- ticular trade, and to take up such lands by patents proving their rights as they shall think good : nevertheless, not excluding others after their choice from taking up land and planting in these new discovered places, as in Virginia now versed. The like order is granted to Major Abram Wood and his associates."
The three gentlemen, William Clayborne, Henry Fleet and Abra- ham Wood, mentioned in this act, each represented a shire in the Virginia House of Burgesses, and were intent, no doubt, upon the acquisition of wealth and the development of the country.
We have no information that leads us to believe that any of the persons named in the preceding act, with the exception of Colo- nel Abraham Wood, at any time made an effort to accomplish the purpose of that act.
Dr. Hale, in his book entitled "Trans-Alleghany Pioneers," makes the following statement :
"The New river was first, discovered and named in 1654 by Colo- nel Abraham Wood, who dwelt at the falls of the Appomattox, now the site of Petersburg, Va."
Being of an adventurous and speculative turn, he got from the Governor of Virginia a concession to explore the country and open up trade with the Indians to the west. There is no record as to the particular route he took, but as the line of adventure, explora- tion and discovery was then all east of the mountains, it is prob-
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Southwest Virginia, 1746-1786.
able that he first struck the river not far from the Blue Ridge and near the present Virginia and North Carolina lines."
I do not know from what source Dr. Hale obtained this infor- mation, and I give it for what it is worth.
It is reasonable to believe that Colonel Wood made this trip, and, to support this view, three circumstances may be mentioned. First. The House of Burgesses of Virginia had authorized Colo- nel Wood, along with others, in July of the preceding year, to discover a new river of unknown land where no English had ever been or discovered. Secondly. A gap in the Blue Ridge, lying between the headwaters of Smith river, a branch of the Dan, in Patrick county, and of Little river, a branch of New river, in Floyd county, is to this day called Wood's Gap. Thirdly. The present New river was known at first as Wood's river. It is known that at the time Thomas Batts and a company of men acting under the authority of Colonel Wood visited this section in the year 1671, Wood's Gap and New river had been previously visited and named by Colonel Wood.
In the year 1671, Thomas Batts and several other persons traveled from the falls of the Appomattox, the present site of Pe- tersburg, Va., acting under a commission from Governor Berkley, to explore the country west of the Blue Ridge mountains and the South Sea.
It is worthy of notice that at the time this expedition was under- taken it was believed that the waters flowing westward beyond the Appalachian mountains emptied into the South Sea.
This was the first effort made to explore the country west of the Blue Ridge, of which any record has been preserved.
A journal of this expedition was made by Thomas Batts, one of the company. The first entry in this journal is as follows :
"A commission being granted the Hon. Maj. Gen. Wood for ye finding out of the ebbing and flowing of ye waters behind the mountains in order to the discovery of the South Sea: Thomas Batts, Thomas Wood, Robert Fallen, accompanied by Perachute, a great man of the Appomattox Indians, and Jack Nesan, formerly servant to Majr. Genl. Wood, with five horses, set forward from Appomattox town in Va., and about eight of the clock in the morn- ing being Fryday Septr. 1st. 1671, and traveling about forty miles, took up their quarters and found they had traveled from Okene-
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Southwest Virginia, 1746-1786.
chee path due west : They traveled for twenty-five days, a part of the time through that portion of Virginia, near the present line between this State and North Carolina, but when they reached the foot of the Alleghany Mountains where the same merges into the Blue Ridge, now in Floyd Co. Va., they turned to the north west at a low place in the said mountain known as Wood's Gap; and after some time they came to a river which Genl. Wood had named Wood's River .* This river for many years thereafter was known as Wood's River, and many of the carly patents in that section of the country describe the lands as located upon Wood's River." The entry in this diary of date the 16th of Sept. says: "About ten of the clock we set forward and, after we had traveled about ten miles, one of the Indians killed a deer; presently after they had a sight of a curious river like the Thames agt. Chilcey (Chel- sea), which having a fall yt made a great noise, whose course was N. and so as they supposed, ran W. about certain pleasant mountains which they saw to the westward. At this point they took up their quarters, their course having been W. by N. At this point they found Indian fields with cornstalks in them. They marked the trees with the initials of the company, using branding irons, and made proclamation in these words : 'Long live King Charles ye 2nd. king of England, France, Scotland, Ireland and Virginia and all the terrytories thereunto belonging, defender of the faith.'
"When they came to ye river-side they found it better and broader than they expected, fully as broad as the Thames over agt, Maping, ye falls much like the falls of the James River in Va., and imagined by the water marks it flowed there about three feet. It was then ebbing water. They set up a stick by the water, but found it ebbed very slowly."
At this point their Indian guides stopped, and refused to go any farther, saying that there dwelt near this place a numerous and powerful tribe of Indians that made salt and sold it to the other tribes, and that no one who entered into their towns had ever been able to escape. Thereupon the trip was abandoned and they started on their return to their homes without having accomplished the object of the exploration, to-wit: the finding of the South Sea. But the journal adds that when they were on the top of the hill they took a prospect as far as they could see and saw westwardly
*Now New River.
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Southwest Virginia, 1746-1786.
over certain delightful hills a fog arise, and a glimmering light as from water, and supposed they might be from some great bog.
Many writers suppose that this exploring party, after reaching the New river, descended the same to the falls of the Kanawha, but it is more than probable that after they reached the river they ascended the same, and the stopping point mentioned in the diary was in Southwest Virginia, and near where the New river first enters Virginia.
Upon the return of this company to their homes Governor Berk- ley was very much interested in their report, but strange as it may seem to the reader, no further attempts were made by au- thority of the Government of Virginia for forty years to explore the country west of the mountains.
It will be seen from the journal of Thomas Batts that he and his associates, and, beyond a doubt, Colonel Abraham Wood an- ticipated, by more than half a century, Governor Spotswood and his Knights of the Golden Horse-Shoe, in the exploration and dis- covery of the country west of the Blue Ridge mountains.
The next effort made to explore the region west of the moun- tains, of which we have any account, occurred in 1716, forty-five years after the journey made by Thomas Batts, above described, and sixty years subsequent to the visit of Colonel Abraham Wood.
In the month of August, 1716, Governor Alexander Spotswood, with several members of his staff, left Williamsburg by coach and proceeded to Germania, where he left his coach and proceeded on horseback. At Germania this party was supplemented by a num- ber of gentlemen, their retainers, a company of rangers, and four Meherrin Indians-about fifty persons in all.
They journeyed by way of the upper Rappahannock, and on the thirty-sixth day out, being September 5, 1716, they scaled the Blue Ridge at Swift Run Gap, now in Augusta county.
John Fontaine, a member of this company, has left a journal of this expedition, and therein thus describes what occurred when they reached the summit of the Blue Ridge: "We drank King George's health and all the royal family's at the very top of the Appalachian mountains."
The company then descended the western side of the mountain, and, reaching the Shenandoah river, they encamped upon its banks. Fontaine thus preserves an account of what occurred :
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Southwest Virginia, 1746-1786.
"The Governor had graving irons, but could not grave anything, the stones were so hard. I graved my name on a tree by the river- side, and the Governor burried a bottle with a paper enclosed on which he writ that he took possession of this place in the name and for King Geo. 1st. of England. We had a good dinner, and after it we got the men together, and loaded all their arms, and we drank the King's health in champaign and fired a volley, the Princess's health in Burgundy and fired a volley, and in claret and fired a volley. We drank the Governor's health and fired an- other volley. We had several sorts of liquers, viz. Virginia Red Wine and White Wine, Esquebaugh, brandy, shrub, rum, cham- paign, cavory, punch water, cider, etc.
"We called the highest mountain Mount George and the one we crossed over Mount Spotswood."
Governor Spotswood, from the fertility of the soil, gave the name of Euphrates to the river (now Shenandoah), and he be- lieved the same emptied into the great lakes and flowed northward.
The Governor, upon his return to Williamsburg, instituted the Order of the Golden-Shoe, and presented to each of the gentlemen accompanying him a small horse-shoe made of gold inscribed with the motto : Sic jurat transcendere montes, "Thus he swears to cross the mountains."
Governor Spotswood, in a letter written in 1716, says: "The chief aim of my expedition over the great mountains in 1716 was to satisfy myself whether it was practicable to come to the lakes."
The country thus described was a part of Sussex county, the western boundary of which was undefined. Spotsylvania was formed from Sussex in 1720, Orange from Spotsylvania in 1734, all of said counties including the territory now within the bounds of this county.
All this information is necessary to a history of Washington county, because Washington county was formed from the territory we are now dealing with, and, for the better reason, that the pro- moters of our early settlements and the founders of our early gov- ernment came from the Valley of Virginia.
In the year 1726, two men named Mackey and Sallings explored the Valley of Virginia.
John Peter Sallings, one of the two explorers of the valley
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Southwest Virginia, 1746-1786.
above mentioned, was captured by the Indians and passed through this immediate section as early as 1726.
Withers, in his history entitled "Border Warfare," thus de- scribes the captivity of Sallings :
"Sallings," he says, "was taken to the country now known as Tennessee, where he remained for some years. In company with a party of Cherokees, he went on a hunting expedition to the salt licks of Kentucky and was there captured by a band of Illinois Indians, with whom the Cherokees were at war. He was taken to Kaskaskia, and adopted into the family of a squaw, whose son had been killed. While with these Indians he several times ac- companied them down the Mississippi river, below the mouth of the Arkansas, and once to the Gulf of Mexico.
The Spaniards in Louisiana, desiring an interpreter, purchased him of his Indian mother, and some of them took him to Canada. He was there redeemed by the French Governor of that province, who sent him to the Dutch settlement in New York, whence he made his way home after an absence of six years.
The earliest visit to this section of Virginia by an Anglo-Saxon of which we have any record or knowledge was made by Dority, a citizen of Eastern Virginia, who in the year 1690 visited the Chero- kee Indians in their home, south of the Little Tennessee, and traded with them. There can be no reasonable doubt that from a very early period, long preceding the making of a permanent settlement by the white man in this section, many of the citizens of Virginia living east of the mountains carried on, in many in- stances, an active trade with the Indians living south of the Little Tennessee and in Kentucky.
This section was uninhabitated by the Indians for many years previous to the explorations of the white man, and the wilderness was full of game of almost all kinds. Their flesh was valuable, and the skins and furs taken in one season by a single hunter would bring many hundreds of dollars, and thus many daring hunters were induced to visit this section long before any white man thought of settling the lands.
In confirmation of this idea Mr. Vaughan, of Amelia county, Va., who died in the year 1801, was employed about the year 1740 to go as a packman with a number of Indian traders to the Chero- kee nation.
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Southwest Virginia, 1746-1786.
The last hunter's cabin he saw as he traveled from Amelia county, Va., to East Tennessee was on Otter river, a branch of Staunton river, now in Bedford county. The route he traveled was an old trading path following closely the location of the Buck- ingham road to a point where it strikes the Stage Road in Bote- tourt county ; thence nearly upon the ground which the Stage Road occupies, crossing New River at Inglis' Ferry; thence to Seven Mile Ford on the Holston; thence to the left of the road which formed the old Stage Road; thence on to the North Fork of Holston, above Long Island in Tennessee, crossing it where the Stage Road formerly crossed it, and on into the heart of Ten- nessee.
This hunter's trail, or Indian trace, was an old path when he first saw it, and he continued to travel the same until 1754, trad- ing with the Indians.
In the year 1730, John and Isaac Van Meter obtained from Gov- ernor Gooch, of Virginia, a patent for forty thousand acres of land to be located in the lower valley, and this warrant was sold in 1731 to Joist Hite, of Pennsylvania, who, in 1:32, brought his family and sixteen other families and located a few miles south of the present site of Winchester, Va., and this is generally believed to be the first settlement by a white man west of the Blue Ridge.
Emigration to this new land was rapid, and soon reached beyond the confines of Hite's possessions.
About the time of the Hite settlement John Lewis, Peter Sal- lings and Mackey made settlements in the valley. Lewis settled on Lewis' creek near the present site of Staunton, Sallings. at the forks of James river and Mackey, at Buffalo Gap.
Within less than one year the population of the country near the settlement made by Lewis was considerable, so rapid was the migration to the new land.
The early settlers in this portion of Virginia had to contend with titles obtained by individuals and companies for large tracts of land, and such grantees were usually favorites of the King or of the King's councillors.
On the 6th of September, 1736, William Gooch, Lieutenant-Gov- ernor of Virginia, issued a patent for the "Manor of Beverly." covering one hundred and eighteen thousand and ninety-one acres of land lying in the county of Orange between the great mountains
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Southwest Virginia, 1746-1786.
and on the River Sherando, and on September 7, 1736, William Beverly, of Essex, became the owner of the entire grant.
This patent covered most of the fine lands in the Valley of Vir- ginia near Staunton and Waynesboro, and soon thereafter Gov- ernor Gooch granted Benjamin Borden five hundred thousand acres of land situated south of Beverly Manor and on the waters of the James and Shenandoah rivers.
Each of the grants above described was to become absolute, pro- vided the patentees succeeded in settling a given number of families thereon in the time named in the grant, and as a result the paten- tees, Hite, Beverly and Borden, solicited and obtained settlers from America and Europe.
Benjamin Borden, upon the receipt of his grant, immediately visited England, and in 1737 returned with a hundred families, among whom were the McDowells, Crawfords, McClures, Alex- anders, Walkers, Moores, Matthews and many others, the found- ers of many of Virginia's distinguished families.
In 1738, the counties of Frederick and Augusta were formed out of Orange. The territories embraced within these two counties in- cluded all of Virginia west of the Blue Ridge and was, almost with- out exception, a howling wilderness occupied by the Indians and wild beasts. It is evident from the statement contained in the act establishing Augusta county that there had been a rapid and con- siderable increase of the population in the valley.
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