After the lease was signed, a day was appointed on which to hold a great race, as well as wrestling-matches and other sports, at Watauga. Not only many whites from the various settlements, but also a number of Indians, came to see or take part in the sports; and all went well until the evening, when some lawless men from Wolf Hills, who had been lurking in the woods round about,35 killed an Indian, whereat his fellows left the spot in great anger.
The settlers now saw themselves threatened with a bloody and vindictive Indian war, and were plunged into terror and despair; yet they were rescued by the address and daring of Robertson. Leaving the others to build a formidable palisaded fort, under the leadership of Sevier, Robertson set off alone through the woods and followed the great war trace down to the Cherokee towns. His mission was one of the greatest peril, for there was imminent danger that the justly angered savages would take his life. But he was a man who never rushed heedlessly into purposeless peril, and never flinched from a danger which there was an object in encountering. His quiet, resolute fearlessness doubtless impressed the savages to whom he went, and helped to save his life; moreover, the Cherokees knew him, trusted his word, and were probably a little overawed by a certain air of command to which all men that were thrown in contact with him bore witness. His ready tact and knowledge of Indian character did the rest. He persuaded the chiefs and warriors to meet him in council, assured them of the anger and sorrow with which all the Watauga people viewed the murder, which had undoubtedly been committed by some outsider, and wound up by declaring his determination to try to have the wrong-doer arrested and punished according to his crime. The Indians, already pleased with his embassy, finally consented to pass the affair over and not take vengeance upon innocent men. Then the daring backwoods diplomatist, well pleased with the success of his mission, returned to the anxious little community.
The incident, taken in connection with the plundering of a store kept by two whites in Holston Valley at the same time, and the unprovoked assault on Boone’s party in Powell’s Valley a year later, shows the extreme difficulty of preventing the worst men of each color from wantonly attacking the innocent. There was hardly a peaceable red or law-abiding white who could not recite injuries he had received from members of the opposite race; and his sense of the wrongs he had suffered, as well as the general frontier indifference to crimes committed against others, made him slow in punishing similar outrages by his own people. The Watauga settlers discountenanced wrong being done the Indians, and tried to atone for it, but they never hunted the offenders down with the necessary mercilessness that alone could have prevented a repetition of their offences. Similarly, but to an even greater degree, the good Indians shielded the bad.36
For several years after they made their lease with the Cherokees the men of the Watauga were not troubled by their Indian neighbors. They had to fear nothing more than a drought, a freshet, a forest fire, or an unusually deep snow-fall if hunting on the mountains in mid-winter. They lived in peace, hunting and farming, marrying, giving in marriage, and rearing many healthy children. By degrees they wrought out of the stubborn wilderness comfortable homes, filled with plenty. The stumps were drawn out of the clearings, and other grains were sown besides corn. Beef, pork, and mutton were sometimes placed on the table, besides the more common venison, bear meat, and wild turkey. The women wove good clothing, the men procured good food, the log-cabins, if homely and rough, yet gave ample warmth and shelter. The families throve, and life was happy, even though varied with toil, danger, and hardship. Books were few, and it was some years before the first church,—Presbyterian, of course,—was started in the region.37 The backwoods Presbyterians managed their church affairs much as they did their civil government: each congregation appointed a committee to choose ground, to build a meeting-house, to collect the minister’s salary, and to pay all charges, by taxing the members proportionately for the same, the committee being required to turn in a full account, and receive instructions, at a general session or meeting held twice every year.38
Thus the Watauga folk were the first Americans who, as a separate body, moved into the wilderness to hew out dwellings for themselves and their children, trusting only to their own shrewd heads, stout hearts, and strong arms, unhelped and unhampered by the power nominally their sovereign.39 They built up a commonwealth which had many successors; they showed that the frontiersmen could do their work unassisted; for they not only proved that they were made of stuff stern enough to hold its own against outside pressure of any sort, but they also made it evident that having won the land they were competent to govern both it and themselves. They were the first to do what the whole nation has since done. It has often been said that we owe all our success to our surroundings; that any race with our opportunities could have done as well as we have done. Undoubtedly our opportunities have been great; undoubtedly we have often and lamentably failed in taking advantage of them. But what nation ever has done all that was possible with the chances offered it? The Spaniards, the Portuguese, and the French, not to speak of the Russians in Siberia, have all enjoyed, and yet have failed to make good use of, the same advantages which we have turned to good account. The truth is, that in starting a new nation in a new country, as we have done, while there are exceptional chances to be taken advantage of, there are also exceptional dangers and difficulties to be overcome. None but heroes can succeed wholly in the work. It is a good thing for us at times to compare what we have done with what we could have done, had we been better and wiser; it may make us try in the future to raise our abilities to the level of our opportunities. Looked at absolutely, we must frankly acknowledge that we have fallen very far short indeed of the high ideal we should have reached. Looked at relatively, it must also be said that we have done better than any other nation or race working under our conditions.
The Watauga settlers outlined in advance the nation’s work. They tamed the rugged and shaggy wilderness, they bid defiance to outside foes, and they successfully solved the difficult problem of self-government.
1 Then called the Cherokee.
2 Volumes could be filled—and indeed it is hardly too much to say, have been filled—with worthless “proofs” of the ownership of Iroquois, Shawnees, or Cherokees, as the case might be. In truth, it would probably have been difficult to get any two members of the same tribe to have pointed out with precision the tribal limits. Each tribe’s country was elastic, for it included all lands from which it was deemed possible to drive out the possessors. In 1773 the various parties of Long Hunters had just the same right to the whole of the territory in question that the Indians themselves had.
3 Campbell MSS.
“The first settlers on Holston River were a remarkable race of people for their intelligence, enterprise, and hardy adventure. The greater portion of them had emigrated from the counties of Botetourt, Augusta, and Frederick, and others along the same valley, and from the upper counties of Maryland and Pennsylvania; were mostly descendants of Irish stock and generally, where they had any religious opinions, were Presbyterians. A very large proportion were religious, and many were members of the church. There were some families, however, and among the most wealthy, that were extremely wild and dissipated in their habits.
“The first clergyman that came among them was the Rev. Charles Cummings, an Irishman by birth, but educated in Pennsylvania. This gentleman was one of the first settlers, defended his domicile for years with his rifle in hand, and built his first meeting-house on the very spot where he and two or three neighbors and one of his servants had had a severe skirmish with the Indians, in which one of his party was killed and another wounded. Here he preached to a very large and most respectable congregation for twenty or thirty years. He was a zealous whig, and contributed much to kindle the patriotic fire which blazed forth among these people in the Revolutionary struggle.”
This is from a MS. sketch of the Holston Pioneers, by the Hon. David Campbell, a son of one of the first settlers. . The Campbell family, of Presb
yterian Irish stock, first came to Pennsylvania, and drifted south. In the Revolutionary war it produced good soldiers and commanders, such as William and Arthur Campbell. The Campbells intermarried with the Prestons, Breckenridges, and other historic families; and their blood now runs in the veins of many of the noted men of the States south of the Potomac and Ohio.
4 The first settlers on the Watauga included both Virginians (as “Captain” William Bean, whose child was the first born in what is now Tennessee; Ramsey, 94) and Carolinians (Haywood, 37). But many of these Carolina hill people were, like Boone and Henderson, members of families who had drifted down from the north. The position of the Presbyterian churches in all this western hill country shows the origin of that portion of the people which gave the tone to the rest; and, as we have already seen, while some of the Presbyterians penetrated to the hills from Charleston, most came down from the north. The Presbyterian blood was, of course, Irish or Scotch; and the numerous English from the coast regions also mingled with the two former kindred stocks, and adopted their faith. The Huguenots, Hollanders, and many of the Germans, being of Calvinistic creed, readily assimilated themselves to the Presbyterians. The absence of Episcopacy on the western border, while in part indicating merely the lack of religion in the backwoods, and the natural growth of dissent in such a society, also indicates that the people were not of pure English descent, and were of different stock from those east of them.
5 Campbell MSS.
6 For this settlement see especially “Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee,” John Haywood (Knoxville, 1823), p. 37; also “Annals of Tennessee,” J. G. M. Ramsey (Charleston, 1853), p. 92; “History of Middle Tennessee,” A. W. Putnam (Nashville, 1859), p. 21; the “Address” of the Hon. John Allison to the Tennessee Press Association (Nashville, 1887); and the “History of Tennessee,” by James Phelan (Boston, 1888).
7 Now Abingdon.
8 It only went to Steep Rock.
9 November 5, 1768.
10 October 14, 1768, at Hard Labor, S. C., confirmed by the treaty of October 18, 1770, at Lockabar, S. C. Both of these treaties acknowledged the rights of the Cherokees to the major part of these northwestern hunting-grounds.
11 Anthony Bledsoe.
12 May 16, 1771.
13 It is said that the greatest proportion of the early settlers came from Wake County, N. C., as did Robertson; but many of them, like Robertson, were of Virginian birth; and the great majority were of the same stock as the Virginian and Pennsylvanian mountaineers. Of the five members of the “court” or governing committee of Watauga, three were of Virginian birth, one came from South Carolina, and the origin of the other is not specified. Ramsey, 107.
14 In Collins, II., 345, is an account of what may be termed a type family of these frontier barbarians. They were named Harpe; and there is something revoltingly bestial in the record of their crimes; of how they traveled through the country, the elder brother, Micajah Harpe, with two wives, the younger with only one; of the appalling number of murders they committed, for even small sums of money; of their unnatural proposal to kill all their children, so that they should not be hampered in their flight; of their life in the woods, like wild beasts, and the ignoble ferocity of their ends. Scarcely less sombre reading is the account of how they were hunted down, and of the wolfish eagerness the borderers showed to massacre the women and children as well as the men.
15 In “American Pioneers,” II., 445, is a full description of the better sort of backwoods log-cabin.
16 Both were born in Virginia; Sevier in Rockingham County, September 23, 1745, and Robertson in Brunswick County, June 28, 1742.
17 Putnam, p. 21; who, however, is evidently in error in thinking he was accompanied by Boone, as the latter was then in Kentucky. A recent writer revives this error in another form, stating that Robertson accompanied Boone to the Watauga in 1769. Boone, however, left on his travels on May 1, 1769, and in June was in Kentucky; whereas Putnam not only informs us definitely that Robertson went to the Watauga for the first time in 1770, but also mentions that when he went his eldest son was already born, and this event took place in June, 1769, so that it is certain Boone and Robertson were not together.
18 The description of his looks is taken from the statements of his descendants, and of the grandchildren of his contemporaries.
19 The importance of maize to the Western settler is shown by the fact that in our tongue it has now monopolized the title of corn.
20 Putnam, p. 24, says it was after the battle of the Great Alamance, which took place May 16, 1771. An untrustworthy tradition says March.
21 In examining numerous original drafts of petitions and the like, signed by hundreds of the original settlers of Tennessee and Kentucky, I have been struck by the small proportion—not much over three or four per cent at the outside—of men who made their mark instead of signing.
22 See, in the collection of the Tenn. Hist. Soc., at Nashville, the MS. notes containing an account of Sevier, given by one of the old settlers named Hillsman. Hillsman especially dwells on the skill with which Sevier could persuade the backwoodsmen to come round to his own way of thinking, while at the same time making them believe that they were acting on their own ideas, and adds—“ whatever he had was at the service of his friends and for the promotion of the Sevier party, which sometimes embraced nearly all the population.”
23 Mr. James Gilmore (Edmund Kirke), in his “John Sevier,” makes some assertions, totally unbacked by proof, about his hero’s alleged feats when only a boy, in the wars between the Virginians and the Indians. He gives no dates but can only refer to Pontiac’s war. Sevier was then eighteen years old, but nevertheless is portrayed, among other things, as leading “a hundred hardy borderers” into the Indian country, burning their villages and “often defeating bodies of five times his own numbers.” These statements are supported by no better authority than traditions gathered a century and a quarter after the event, and must be dismissed as mere fable. They show a total and rather amusing ignorance not only of the conditions of Indian warfare, but also of the history of the particular contest referred to. Mr. Gilmore forgets that we have numerous histories of the war in which Sevier is supposed to have distinguished himself, and that in not one of them is there a syllable hinting at what he says. Neither Sevier nor any one else ever with a hundred men defeated “five times his number” of Northwestern Indians in the woods; and during Sevier’s life in Virginia, the only defeat ever suffered by such a body of Indians was at Bushy Run, when Bouquet gained a hard-fought victory. After the end of Pontiac’s war there was no expedition of importance undertaken by Virginians against the Indians until 1774, and of Pontiac’s war itself we have full knowledge. Sevier was neither leader nor participant in any such marvellous feats as Mr. Gilmore describes; on the contrary, the skirmishes in which he may have been engaged were of such small importance that no record remains concerning them. Had Sevier done any such deeds all the colonies would have rung with his exploits, instead of their remaining utterly unknown for a hundred and twenty-five years. It is extraordinary that any author should be willing to put his name to such reckless misstatements, in what purports to be a history and not a book of fiction.
24 The Watauga settlers and those of Carter’s Valley were the first to organize; the Nolichucky people came in later.
25 Putnam, 30.
26 The original articles of the Watauga Association have been lost, and no copies are extant. All we know of the matter is derived from Haywood, Ramsey, and Putnam, three historians to whose praiseworthy industry Tennessee owes as much as Kentucky does to Marshall, Butler, and Collins. Ramsey, by the way, chooses rather inappropriate adjectives when he calls the government “paternal and patriarchal.”
27 A very good account of this government is given in Allison’s Address, pp. 5-8, and from it the following examples are taken.
28 A right the exercise of which is of course susceptible to great abuse, but, nevertheless, is often absolutely
necessary to the well-being of a frontier community. In almost every case where I have personally known it exercised, the character of the individual ordered off justified the act.
29 Allison’s Address.
30 Ramsey, 109. Putnam says 36° 35´.
31 Alexander Cameron.
32 Haywood, 43.
33 Meanwhile Carter’s Valley, then believed to lie in Virginia, had been settled by Virginians; the Indians robbed a trader’s store, and indemnified the owners by giving them land, at the treaty of Sycamore Shoals. This land was leased in job lots to settlers, who, however, kept possession without paying when they found it lay in North Carolina.
34 A similar but separate lease was made by the settlers on the Nolichucky, who acquired a beautiful and fertile valley in exchange for the merchandise carried on the back of a single pack-horse. Among the whites themselves transfers of land were made in very simple forms, and conveyed not the fee simple but merely the grantor’s claim.
35 Haywood says they were named Crabtree; Putnam hints that they had lost a brother when Boone’s party was attacked and his son killed; but the attack on Boone did not take place till over a year after this time.
36 Even La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (8, 95), who loathed the backwoodsmen—few polished Europeans being able to see any but the repulsive side of frontier character, a side certainly very often prominent—also speaks of the tendency of the worst Indians to go to the frontier to rob and murder.
37 Salem Church was founded (Allison, 8) in 1777, by Sam uel Doak, a Princeton graduate, and a man of sound learning, who also at the same time started Washington College, the first real institution of learning south of the Alleghanies.
The Winning of the West Page 18