The Winning of the West, Volume Two by Theodore Roosevelt

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The speech is interesting because it shows that the Indians both liked
and respected Sevier, their most redoubtable foe; and because it
acknowledges that in the previous war the Cherokees themselves had been
the wrongdoers. Even Old Tassel had been implicated in the treacherous
conduct of the chiefs at that period; but he generally acted very well,
and belonged with the large number of his tribesmen who, for no fault of
their own, were shamefully misused by the whites.

The white intruders were not removed. No immediate collision followed on
this account; but when Old Tassel's talk was forwarded to the governor,
small parties of Chickamaugas, assisted by young braves from among the
Creeks and Erati, had already begun to commit ravages on the outlying
settlements. Two weeks before Old Tassel spoke, on the 11th of
September, a family of whites was butchered on Moccasin Creek. The
neighbors gathered, pursued the Indians, and recaptured the survivors.
[Footnote: Calendar of Va. State Papers, III., p. 317.] Other outrages
followed, throughout the month. Sevier as usual came to the rescue of
the angered settlers. He gathered a couple of hundred mounted riflemen,
and made one of his swift retaliatory inroads. His men were simply
volunteers, for there was no money in the country treasury with which to
pay them or provide them with food and provisions; it was their own
quarrel, and they furnished their own services free, each bringing his
horse, rifle, ammunition, blanket, and wallet of parched corn. Naturally
such troops made war purely according to their own ideas, and cared
nothing whatever for the commands of those governmental bodies who were
theoretically their superiors. They were poor men, staunch patriots, who
had suffered much and done all they could during the Revolution
[Footnote: _Do_.]; now, when threatened by the savages they were left to
protect themselves, and they did it in their own way. Sevier led his
force down through the Overhill towns, doing their people no injury and
holding a peace talk with them. They gave him a half breed, John Watts,
afterwards one of their chiefs, as guide; and he marched quickly against
some of the Chickamauga towns, where he destroyed the cabins and
provision hoards. Afterwards he penetrated to the Coosa, where he burned
one or two Creek villages. The inhabitants fled from the towns before he
could reach them; and his own motions were so rapid that they could
never gather in force strong enough to assail him. [Footnote: The
authority for this expedition is Haywood (p. 106); Ramsey simply alters
one or two unimportant details. Haywood commits so many blunders
concerning the early Indian wars that it is only safe to regard his
accounts as true in outline; and even for this outline it is to be
wished we had additional authority. Mr. Kirke, in the "Rear-guard," p.
313, puts in an account of a battle on Lookout Mountain, wherein Sevier
and his two hundred men defeat "five hundred tories and savages." He
does not even hint at his authority for this, unless in a sentence of
the preface where he says, "a large part of my material I have derived
from what may be termed 'original sources'--old settlers." Of course the
statement of an old settler is worthless when it relates to an alleged
important event which took place a hundred and five years before, and
yet escaped the notice of all contemporary and subsequent historians. In
plain truth unless Mr. Kirke can produce something like contemporary--or
approximately contemporary--documentary evidence for this mythical
battle, it must be set down as pure invention. It is with real
reluctance that I speak thus of Mr. Kirke's books. He has done good
service in popularizing the study of early western history, and
especially in calling attention to the wonderful careers of Sevier and
Robertson. Had he laid no claim to historic accuracy I should have been
tempted to let his books pass unnoticed; but in the preface to his "John
Sevier" he especially asserts that his writings "may be safely accepted
as authentic history." On first reading his book I was surprised and
pleased at the information it contained; when I came to study the
subject I was still more surprised and much less pleased at discovering
such wholesale inaccuracy--to be perfectly just I should be obliged to
use a stronger term. Even a popular history ought to pay at least some
little regard to truth.] Very few Indians were killed, and apparently
none of Sevier's people; a tory, an ex-British sergeant, then living
with an Indian squaw, was among the slain.

This foray brought but a short relief to the settlements. On Christmas
day three men were killed on the Clinch; and it was so unusual a season
for the war parties to be abroad that the attack caused widespread
alarm. [Footnote: Calendar of Va. State Papers, III., p. 424.] Early in
the spring of 1783 the ravages began again. [Footnote: _Do_., p. 479.]
Some time before General Wayne had addressed the Creeks and Choctaws,
reproaching them with the aid they had given the British, and
threatening them with a bloody chastisement if they would not keep the
peace. [Footnote: State Department MSS. Letters of Washington, No. 152,
Vol. XI., Feb. I, 1782.] A threat from Mad Anthony meant something, and
the Indians paid at least momentary heed. Georgia enjoyed a short
respite, which, as usual, the more reckless borderers strove to bring to
an end by encroaching on the Indian lands, while the State authorities,
on the other hand, did their best to stop not only such encroachments,
but also all travelling and hunting in the Indian country, and
especially the marking of trees. This last operation, as Governor Lyman
Hall remarked in his proclamation, gave "Great Offence to the Indians,"
[Footnote: Gazette of the State of Georgia, July 10. 1783.] who
thoroughly understood that the surveys indicated the approaching
confiscation of their territory.

Towards the end of 1783 a definite peace was concluded with the
Chickasaws, who ever afterwards remained friendly [Footnote: Va. State
Papers, III., p. 548.]; but the Creeks, while amusing the Georgians by
pretending to treat, let their parties of young braves find an outlet
for their energies by assailing the Holston and Cumberland settlements.
[Footnote: _Do_., p. 532.] The North Carolina Legislature, becoming
impatient, passed a law summarily appropriating certain lands that were
claimed by the unfortunate Cherokees. The troubled peace was continually
threatened by the actions either of ungovernable frontiersmen or of
bloodthirsty and vindictive Indians. [Footnote: _Do_., p. 560.] Small
parties of scouts were incessantly employed in patrolling the southern
border.

Growth of the Settlements.

Nevertheless, all pressing danger from the Indians was over. The Holston
settlements throve lustily. Wagon roads were made, leading into both
Virginia and North Carolina. Settlers thronged into the country, the
roads were well travelled, and the clearings became very numerous. The
villages began to feel safe without stockades, save those on the extreme
border, which were still built in the usual frontier style. The
scattering log school-houses and meeting-houses increased steadily in
numbers, and in 1783, Methodism, destined to become the leading and
typical creed of the west, first gained a foothold along the Holston,
with a congregation of seventy-six members. [Footnote: "History of
Methodism in Tennessee," John B. M'Ferrin (Nashville, 1873), I., 26.]

These people of the upper Tennessee valleys long continued one in
interest as in blood. Whether they lived north or south of the Virginia
or North Carolina boundary, they were more closely united to one another
than they were to the seaboard governments of which they formed part.
Their history is not generally studied as a whole, because one portion
of their territory continued part of Virginia, while the remainder was
cut off from North Carolina as the nucleus of a separate State. But in
the time of their importance, in the first formative period of the young
west, all these Holston settlements must be treated together, or else
their real place in our history will be totally misunderstood.
[Footnote: Nothing gives a more fragmentary and twisted view of our
history than to treat it purely by States; this is the reason that a
State history is generally of so little importance when taken by itself.
On the other hand it is of course true that the fundamental features in
our history can only be shown by giving proper prominence to the
individual state life.]

Frontier Towns.

The two towns of Abingdon and Jonesboro, respectively north and south of
the line, were the centres of activity. In Jonesboro the log
court-house, with its clapboard roof, was abandoned, and in its place a
twenty-four-foot-square building of hewn logs was put up; it had a
shingled roof and plank floors, and contained a justice's bench, a
lawyers' and clerk's bar, and a sheriff's box to sit in. The county of
Washington was now further subdivided, its southwest portion being
erected into the county of Greene, so that there were three counties of
North Carolina west of the mountains. The court of the new county
consisted of several justices, who appointed their own clerk, sheriff,
attorney for the State, entry-taker, surveyer, and registrar. They
appropriated money to pay for the use of the log-house where they held
sessions, laid a tax of a shilling specie on every hundred pounds for
the purpose of erecting public buildings, laid out roads, issued
licenses to build mills, and bench warrants to take suspected persons.
[Footnote: Ramsey, 277. The North Carolina Legislature, in 1783, passed
an act giving Henderson two hundred thousand acres, and appointed Joseph
Martin Indian agent, arranged for a treaty with the Cherokees, and
provided that any good men should be allowed to trade with the Indians.]

Abingdon was a typical little frontier town of the class that
immediately succeeded the stockaded hamlets. A public square had been
laid out, round which, and down the straggling main street, the few
buildings were scattered; all were of logs, from the court house and
small jail down. There were three or four taverns. The two best were
respectively houses of entertainment for those who were fond of their
brandy, and for the temperate. There were a blacksmith shop and a couple
of stores. [Footnote: One was "kept by two Irishmen named Daniel and
Manasses Freil" (_sic_; the names look very much more German than
Irish).] The traders brought their goods from Alexandria, Baltimore, or
even Philadelphia, and made a handsome profit. The lower taverns were
scenes of drunken frolic, often ending in free fights. There was no
constable, and the sheriff, when called to quell a disturbance, summoned
as a posse those of the bystanders whom he deemed friendly to the cause
of law and order. There were many strangers passing through; and the
better class of these were welcome at the rambling log-houses of the
neighboring backwoods gentry, who often themselves rode into the taverns
to learn from the travellers what was happening in the great world
beyond the mountains. Court-day was a great occasion; all the
neighborhood flocked in to gossip, lounge, race horses, and fight. Of
course in such gatherings there were always certain privileged
characters. At Abingdon these were to be found in the persons of a
hunter named Edward Callahan, and his wife Sukey. As regularly as
court-day came round they appeared, Sukey driving a cart laden with
pies, cakes, and drinkables, while Edward, whose rolls of furs and deer
hides were also in the cart, stalked at its tail on foot, in full
hunter's dress, with rifle, powder-horn, and bullet-bag, while his fine,
well-taught hunting-dog followed at his heels. Sukey would halt in the
middle of the street, make an awning for herself and begin business,
while Edward strolled off to see about selling his peltries. Sukey never
would take out a license, and so was often in trouble for selling
liquor. The judges were strict in proceeding against offenders--and even
stricter against the unfortunate tories--but they had a humorous liking
for Sukey, which was shared by the various grand juries. By means of
some excuse or other she was always let off, and in return showed great
gratitude to such of her benefactors as came near her mountain cabin.
[Footnote: Campbell MSS.; an account of the "Town of Abingdon," by David
Campbell, who "first saw it in 1782."]

Court-day was apt to close with much hard drinking; for the backwoodsmen
of every degree dearly loved whiskey.

CHAPTER XI.

ROBERTSON FOUNDS THE CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 1779-1780.

James Robertson.

Robertson had no share in the glory of King's Mountain, and no part in
the subsequent career of the men who won it; for, at the time, he was
doing his allotted work, a work of at least equal importance, in a
different field. The year before the mountaineers faced Ferguson, the
man who had done more than any one in founding the settlements from
which the victors came, had once more gone into the wilderness to build
a new and even more typical frontier commonwealth, the westernmost of
any yet founded by the backwoodsmen.

Robertson had been for ten years a leader among the Holston and Watauga
people. He had at different times played the foremost part in organizing
the civil government and in repelling outside attack. He had been
particularly successful in his dealings with the Indians, and by his
missions to them had managed to keep the peace unbroken on more than one
occasion when a war would have been disastrous to the whites. He was
prosperous and successful in his private affairs; nevertheless, in 1779,
the restless craving for change and adventure surged so strongly in his
breast that it once more drove him forth to wander in the forest. In the
true border temper he determined to abandon the home he had made, and to
seek out a new one hundreds of miles farther in the heart of the
hunting-grounds of the red warriors.

The point pitched upon was the beautiful country lying along the great
bend of the Cumberland. Many adventurous settlers were anxious to
accompany Robertson, and, like him, to take their wives and children
with them into the new land. It was agreed that a small party of
explorers should go first in the early spring, to plant corn, that the
families might have it to eat when they followed in the fall.

The Cumberland Country.

The spot was already well known to hunters. Who had first visited it
cannot be said; though tradition has kept the names of several among the
many who at times halted there while on their wanderings. [Footnote: One
Stone or Stoner, perhaps Boon's old associate, is the first whose name
is given in the books. But in both Kentucky and Tennessee it is idle to
try to find out exactly who the first explorers were. They were
unlettered woodsmen; it is only by chance that some of their names have
been kept and others lost; the point to be remembered is that many
hunters were wandering over the land at the same time, that they drifted
to many different places, and that now and then an accident preserved
the name of some hunter and of some place he visited.] Old Kasper
Mansker and others had made hunting trips thither for ten years past;
and they had sometimes met the Creole trappers from the Illinois. When
Mansker first went to the Bluffs, [Footnote: The locality where
Nashborough was built, was sometimes spoken of as the Bluffs, and
sometimes as the French Lick.] in 1769, the buffaloes were more numerous
than he had ever seen them before; the ground literally shook under the
gallop of the mighty herds, they crowded in dense throngs round the
licks, and the forest resounded with their grunting bellows. He and
other woodsmen came back there off and on, hunting and trapping, and
living in huts made of buffalo hides; just such huts as the hunters
dwelt in on the Little Missouri and Powder rivers as late as 1883,
except that the plainsmen generally made dug-outs in the sides of the
buttes and used the hides only for the roofs and fronts. So the place
was well known, and the reports of the hunters had made many settlers
eager to visit it, though as yet no regular path led thither. In 1778
the first permanent settler arrived in the person of a hunter named
Spencer, who spent the following winter entirely alone in this remote
wilderness, living in a hollow sycamore-tree. Spencer was a giant in his
day, a man huge in body and limb, all whose life had been spent in the
wilderness. He came to the bend of the Cumberland from Kentucky in the
early spring, being in search of good land on which to settle. Other
hunters were with him, and they stayed some time. A creole trapper from
the Wabash was then living in a cabin on the south side of the river. He
did not meet the new-comers; but one day he saw the huge moccasin tracks
of Spencer, and on the following morning the party passed close by his
cabin in chase of a wounded buffalo, halloing and shouting as they
dashed through the underwood. Whether he thought them Indians, or
whether, as is more likely, he shared the fear and dislike felt by most
of the Creoles for the American backwoodsmen, cannot be said; but
certainly he left his cabin, swam the river, and plunging into the
forest, straightway fled to his kinsfolk on the banks of the Wabash.
Spencer was soon left by his companions; though one of them stayed with
him a short time, helping him to plant a field of corn. Then this man,
too, wished to return. He had lost his hunting-knife; so Spencer went
with him to the barrens of Kentucky, put him on the right path, and
breaking his own knife, gave his departing friend a piece of the metal.
The undaunted old hunter himself returned to the banks of the
Cumberland, and sojourned throughout the fall and winter in the
neighborhood of the little clearing on which he had raised the corn
crop; a strange, huge, solitary man, self-reliant, unflinching, cut off
from all his fellows by endless leagues of shadowy forest. Thus he dwelt
alone in the vast dim wastes, wandering whithersoever he listed through
the depths of the melancholy and wintry woods, sleeping by his camp-fire
or in the hollow tree-trunk, ever ready to do battle against brute or
human foe--a stark and sombre harbinger of the oncoming civilization.

Spencer's figure, seen through the mist that shrouds early western
history, is striking and picturesque in itself; yet its chief interest
lies in the fact that he was but a type of many other men whose lives
were no less lonely and dangerous. He had no qualities to make him a
leader when settlements sprang up around him. To the end of his days he
remained a solitary hunter and Indian fighter, spurning restraint and
comfort, and seeking the strong excitement of danger to give zest to his
life. Even in the time of the greatest peril from the savages he would
not stay shut up in the forts, but continued his roving, wandering life,
trusting to his own quick senses, wonderful strength, and iron nerves.
He even continued to lie out at night, kindling a fire, and then lying
down to sleep far from it. [Footnote: _Southwestern Monthly_, Nashville,
1852, vol. II. General Hall's narrative.]

Robertson Travels Thither.

Early in the year 1779 a leader of men came to the place where the old
hunter had roamed and killed game; and with the new-comer came those who
were to posses the land. Robertson left the Watauga settlements soon
after the spring opened, [Footnote: It is very difficult to reconcile
the dates of these early movements; even the contemporary documents are
often a little vague, while Haywood, Ramsey, and Putnam are frequently
months out of the way. Apparently Robertson stayed as commissioner in
Chota until February or March, 1779, when he gave warning of the
intended raid of the Chickamaugas, and immediately afterwards came back
to the settlements and started out for the Cumberland, before Shelby
left on his Chickamauga expedition. But it is possible that he had left
Chota before, and that another man was there as commissioner at the time
of the Chickamauga raid which was followed by Shelby's counter-stroke.]
with eight companions, one of them a negro. He followed Boon's
trace,--Wilderness Road,--through Cumberland Gap, and across the
Cumberland River. Then he struck off southwest through the wilderness,
lightening his labor by taking the broad, well-beaten buffalo trails
whenever they led in his direction; they were very distinct near the
pools and springs, and especially going to and from the licks. The
adventurers reached the bend of the Cumberland without mishap, and fixed
on the neighborhood of the Bluff, the ground near the French Lick, as
that best suited for their purpose; and they planted a field of corn on
the site of the future forted village of Nashborough. A few days after
their arrival they were joined by another batch of hunter-settlers, who
had come out under the leadership of Kasper Mansker.

As soon as the corn was planted and cabins put up, most of the intending
settlers returned to their old homes to bring out their families,
leaving three of their number "to keep the buffaloes out of the corn."
[Footnote: Haywood, 83.] Robertson himself first went north through the
wilderness to see George Rogers Clark in Illinois, to purchase
cabin-rights from him. This act gives an insight into at least some of
the motives that influenced the adventurers. Doubtless they were
impelled largely by sheer restlessness and love of change and
excitement; [Footnote: Phelan, p. 111, fails to do justice to these
motives, while very properly insisting on what earlier historians
ignored, the intense desire for land speculation.] and these motives
would probably have induced them to act as they did, even had there been
no others. But another and most powerful spring of action was the desire
to gain land--not merely land for settlement, but land for speculative
purposes. Wild land was then so abundant that the quantity literally
seemed inexhaustible; and it was absolutely valueless until settled. Our
forefathers may well be pardoned for failing to see that it was of more
importance to have it owned in small lots by actual settlers than to
have it filled up quickly under a system of huge grants to individuals
or corporations. Many wise and good men honestly believed that they
would benefit the country at the same time that they enriched themselves
by acquiring vast tracts of virgin wilderness, and then proceeding to
people them. There was a rage for land speculation and land companies of
every kind.

The private correspondence of almost all the public men of the period,
from Washington, Madison, and Gouverneur Morris down, is full of the
subject. Innumerable people of position and influence dreamed of
acquiring untold wealth in this manner. Almost every man of note was
actually or potentially a land speculator; and in turn almost every
prominent pioneer from Clark and Boon to Shelby and Robertson was either
himself one of the speculators or an agent for those who were. Many
people did not understand the laws on the subject, or hoped to evade
them; and the hope was as strong in the breast of the hunter, who made a
"tomahawk claim" by blazing a few trees, and sold it for a small sum to
a new-comer, as in that of the well-to-do schemer, who bought an Indian
title for a song, and then got what he could from all outsiders who came
in to dwell on the land.

This speculative spirit was a powerful stimulus to the settlement not
only of Kentucky, but of middle Tennessee. Henderson's claim included
the Cumberland country, and when North Carolina annulled his rights, she
promised him a large but indefinitely located piece of land in their
place. He tried to undersell the state in the land market, and
undoubtedly his offers had been among the main causes that induced
Robertson and his associates to go to the Cumberland when they did. But
at the time it was uncertain whether Cumberland lay in Virginia or North
Carolina, as the line was not run by the surveyors until the following
spring; and Robertson went up to see Clark, because it was rumored that
the latter had the disposal of Virginia "cabin-rights"; under which each
man could, for a small sum, purchase a thousand acres, on condition of
building a cabin and raising a crop. However, as it turned out, he might
have spared himself the journey, for the settlement proved to be well
within the Carolina boundary.

Many Settlers Join Him.

In the fall very many men came out to the new settlement, guided thither
by Robertson and Mansker; the former persuading a number who were bound
to Kentucky to come to the Cumberland instead. Among them were two or
three of the Long Hunters, whose wanderings had done so much to make the
country known. Robertson's especial partner was a man named John
Donelson. The latter went by water and took a large party of immigrants,
including all the women and children, down the Tennessee, and thence up
the Ohio and Cumberland to the Bluff or French Lick. [Footnote: The plan
was that Robertson should meet this party at the Muscle Shoals, and that
they should go from thence overland; but owing to the severity of the
winter, Robertson could not get to the shoals.] Among them were
Robertson's entire family, and Donelson's daughter Rachel, the future
wife of Andrew Jackson, who missed by so narrow a margin being mistress
of the White House. Robertson, meanwhile, was to lead the rest of the
men by land, so that they should get there first and make ready for the
coming of their families.

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