SEVIER‚ ROBERTSON‚ AND THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH‚ 1769-1774.

Soon after the successful ending of the last colonial struggle with France, and the conquest of Canada, the British king issued a proclamation forbidding the English colonists from trespassing on Indian grounds, or moving west of the mountains.  But in 1768, at the treaty of Fort Stanwix, the Six Nations agreed to surrender to the English all the lands lying between the Ohio and the Tennessee; and this treaty was at once seized upon by the backwoodsmen as offering an excuse for settling beyond the mountains.  However, the Iroquois had ceded lands to which they had no more right than a score or more other Indian tribes; and these latter, not having been consulted, felt at perfect liberty to make war on the intruders.  In point of fact, no one tribe or set of tribes could cede Kentucky or Tennessee, because no one tribe or set of tribes owned either.  The great hunting-grounds between the Ohio and the Tennessee formed a debatable land, claimed by every tribe that could hold its own against its rivals.

The eastern part of what is now Tennessee consists of a great hill-strewn, forest-clad valley, running from northeast to southwest, bounded on one side by the Cumberland, and on the other by the Great Smoky and Unaka Mountains; the latter separating it from North Carolina.  In this valley arise and end the Clinch, the Holston, the Watauga, the Nolichucky, the French Broad, and the other streams, whose combined volume makes the Tennessee River.  The upper end of the valley lies in southwestern Virginia, the head-waters of some of the rivers being well within that State; and though the province was really part of North Carolina, it was separated therefrom by high mountain chains, while from Virginia it was easy to follow the watercourses down the valley.  Thus, as elsewhere among the mountains forming the western frontier, the first movements of population went parallel with, rather than across, the ranges.  As in western Virginia the first settlers came, for the most part, from Pennsylvania, so, in turn, in what was then western North Carolina, and is now eastern Tennessee, the first settlers came mainly from Virginia, and, indeed, in great part, from this same Pennsylvanian stock. Of course, in each case there was also a very considerable movement directly westward. They were a sturdy race, enterprising and intelligent, fond of the strong excitement inherent in the adventurous frontier life.  Their untamed and turbulent passions, and the lawless freedom of their lives, made them a population very productive of wild, headstrong characters; yet, as a whole, they were a God-fearing race, as was but natural in those who sprang from the loins of the Irish Calvinists.  Their preachers, all Presbyterians, followed close behind the first settlers, and shared their toil and dangers; they tilled their fields rifle in hand, and fought the Indians valorously.  They felt that they were dispossessing the Canaanites, and were thus working the Lord’s will in preparing the land for a race which they believed was more truly His chosen people than was that nation which Joshua led across the Jordan.  They exhorted no less earnestly in the bare meeting-houses on Sunday, because their hands were roughened with guiding the plow and wielding the axe on week-days; for they did not believe that being called to preach the word of God absolved them from earning their living by the sweat of their brows.  The women, the wives of the settlers, were of the same iron temper.  They fearlessly fronted every danger the men did, and they worked quite as hard.  They prized the knowledge and learning they themselves had been forced to do without; and many a backwoods woman by thrift and industry, by the sale of her butter and cheese, and the calves from her cows, enabled her husband to give his sons good schooling, and perhaps to provide for some favored member of the family the opportunity to secure a really first-class education.

The valley in which these splendid pioneers of our people settled, lay directly in the track of the Indian marauding parties, for the great war trail used by the Cherokees and by their northern foes ran along its whole length.  This war trail, or war trace as it was then called, was in places very distinct, although apparently never as well marked as were some of the buffalo trails.  It sent off a branch to Cumberland Gap, whence it ran directly north through Kentucky to the Ohio, being there known as the warriors’ path.  Along these trails the northern and southern Indians passed and re-passed when they went to war against each other; and of course they were ready and eager to attack any white man who might settle down along their course.

In 1769, the year that Boon first went to Kentucky, the first permanent settlers came to the banks of the Watauga, the settlement being merely an enlargement of the Virginia settlement, which had for a short time existed on the head-waters of the Holston, especially near Wolf Hills. At first the settlers thought they were still in the domain of Virginia, for at that time the line marking her southern boundary had not been run so far west. Indeed, had they not considered the land as belonging to Virginia, they would probably not at the moment have dared to intrude farther on territory claimed by the Indians.  But while the treaty between the crown and the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix had resulted in the cession of whatever right the Six Nations had to the southwestern territory, another treaty was concluded about the same time with the Cherokees, by which the latter agreed to surrender their claims to a small portion of this country, though as a matter of fact before the treaty was signed white settlers had crowded beyond the limits allowed them.  These two treaties, in the first of which one set of tribes surrendered a small portion of land, while in the second an entirely different confederacy surrendered a larger tract, which, however, included part of the first cession, are sufficient to show the absolute confusion of the Indian land titles.

But in 1771, one of the new-comers, who was a practical surveyor, ran out the Virginia boundary line some distance to the westward, and discovered that the Watauga settlement came within the limits of North Carolina.  Hitherto the settlers had supposed that they themselves were governed by the Virginian law, and that their rights as against the Indians were guaranteed by the Virginian government; but this discovery threw them back upon their own resources.  They suddenly found themselves obliged to organize a civil government, under which they themselves should live, and at the same time to enter into a treaty on their own account with the neighboring Indians, to whom the land they were on apparently belonged.

The first need was even more pressing than the second.  North Carolina was always a turbulent and disorderly colony, unable to enforce law and justice even in the long-settled districts; so that it was wholly out of the question to appeal to her for aid in governing a remote and outlying community.  Moreover, about the time that the Watauga commonwealth was founded, the troubles in North Carolina came to a head.  Open war ensued between the adherents of the royal governor, Tryon, on the one hand, and the Regulators, as the insurgents styled themselves, on the other, the struggle ending with the overthrow of the Regulators at the battle of the Alamance.

As a consequence of these troubles, many people from the back counties of North Carolina crossed the mountains, and took up their abode among the pioneers on the Watauga and upper Holston; the beautiful valley of the Nolichucky soon receiving its share of this stream of immigration.  Among the first comers were many members of the class of desperate adventurers always to be found hanging round the outskirts of frontier civilization.  Horse-thieves, murderers, escaped bond-servants, runaway debtors ­all, in fleeing from the law, sought to find a secure asylum in the wilderness.  The brutal and lawless wickedness of these men, whose uncouth and raw savagery was almost more repulsive than that of city criminals, made it imperative upon the decent members of the community to unite for self-protection.  The desperadoes were often mere human beasts of prey; they plundered whites and Indians impartially.  They not only by their thefts and murders exasperated the Indians into retaliating on innocent whites, but, on the other hand, they also often deserted their own color and went to live among the redskins, becoming their leaders in the worst outrages.

But the bulk of the settlers were men of sterling worth; fit to be the pioneer fathers of a mighty and beautiful state.  They possessed the courage that enabled them to defy outside foes, together with the rough, practical commonsense that allowed them to establish a simple but effective form of government, so as to preserve order among themselves.  To succeed in the wilderness, it was necessary to possess not only daring, but also patience and the capacity to endure grinding toil.  The pioneers were hunters and husbandmen.  Each, by the aid of axe and brand, cleared his patch of corn land in the forest, close to some clear, swift-flowing stream, and by his skill with the rifle won from canebrake and woodland the game on which his family lived until the first crop was grown.

A few of the more reckless and foolhardy, and more especially of those who were either merely hunters and not farmers, or else who were of doubtful character, lived entirely by themselves; but, as a rule, each knot of settlers was gathered together into a little stockaded hamlet, called a fort or station.  This system of defensive villages was very distinctive of pioneer backwoods life, and was unique of its kind; without it the settlement of the west and southwest would have been indefinitely postponed.  In no other way could the settlers have combined for defence, while yet retaining their individual ownership of the land.  The Watauga forts or palisaded villages were of the usual kind, the cabins and blockhouses connected by a heavy loop-holed picket.  They were admirably adapted for defence with the rifle.  As there was no moat, there was a certain danger from an attack with fire unless water was stored within; and it was of course necessary to guard carefully against surprise.  But to open assault they were practically impregnable, and they therefore offered a sure haven of refuge to the settlers in case of an Indian inroad.  In time of peace, the inhabitants moved out, to live in their isolated log-cabins and till the stump-dotted clearings.  Trails led through the dark forests from one station to another, as well as to the settled districts beyond the mountains; and at long intervals men drove along them bands of pack-horses, laden with the few indispensable necessaries the settlers could not procure by their own labor.  The pack-horse was the first, and for a long time the only, method of carrying on trade in the backwoods; and the business of the packer was one of the leading frontier industries.

The settlers worked hard and hunted hard, and lived both plainly and roughly.  Their cabins were roofed with clapboards, or huge shingles, split from the log with maul and wedge, and held in place by heavy stones, or by poles; the floors were made of rived puncheons, hewn smooth on one surface; the chimney was outside the hut, made of rock when possible, otherwise of logs thickly plastered with clay that was strengthened with hogs’ bristles or deer hair; in the great fire-place was a tongue on which to hang pot-hooks and kettle; the unglazed window had a wooden shutter, and the door was made of great clapboards. The men made their own harness, farming implements, and domestic utensils; and, as in every other community still living in the heroic age, the smith was a person of the utmost importance.  There was but one thing that all could have in any quantity, and that was land; each had all of this he wanted for the taking, ­or if it was known to belong to the Indians, he got its use for a few trinkets or a flask of whisky.  A few of the settlers still kept some of the Presbyterian austerity of character, as regards amusements; but, as a rule, they were fond of horse-racing, drinking, dancing, and fiddling.  The corn-shuckings, flax-pullings, log-rollings (when the felled timber was rolled off the clearings), house-raisings, maple-sugar-boilings, and the like were scenes of boisterous and light-hearted merriment, to which the whole neighborhood came, for it was accounted an insult if a man was not asked in to help on such occasions, and none but a base churl would refuse his assistance.  The backwoods people had to front peril and hardship without stint, and they loved for the moment to leap out of the bounds of their narrow lives and taste the coarse pleasures that are always dear to a strong, simple, and primitive race.  Yet underneath their moodiness and their fitful light-heartedness lay a spirit that when roused was terrible in its ruthless and stern intensity of purpose.

Such were the settlers of the Watauga, the founders of the commonwealth that grew into the State of Tennessee, who early in 1772 decided that they must form some kind of government that would put down wrong-doing and work equity between man and man.  Two of their number already towered head and shoulders above the rest in importance and merit especial mention; for they were destined for the next thirty years to play the chief parts in the history of that portion of the Southwest which largely through their own efforts became the State of Tennessee.  These two men, neither of them yet thirty years of age, were John Sevier and James Robertson.

Robertson first came to the Watauga early in 1770. He had then been married for two years, and had been “learning his letters and to spell” from his well-educated wife; for he belonged to a backwoods family, even poorer than the average, and he had not so much as received the rudimentary education that could be acquired at an “old-field” school.  But he was a man of remarkable natural powers, above the medium height, with wiry, robust form, light-blue eyes, fair complexion, and dark hair; his somewhat sombre face had in it a look of self-contained strength that made it impressive; and his taciturn, quiet, masterful way of dealing with men and affairs, together with his singular mixture of cool caution and most adventurous daring, gave him an immediate hold even upon such lawless spirits as those of the border.  He was a mighty hunter; but, unlike Boon, hunting and exploration were to him secondary affairs, and he came to examine the lands with the eye of a pioneer settler.  He intended to have a home where he could bring up his family, and, if possible, he wished to find rich lands, with good springs, whereto he might lead those of his neighbors who, like himself, eagerly desired to rise in the world, and to provide for the well-being of their children.

To find such a country Robertson, then dwelling in North Carolina, decided to go across the mountains.  He started off alone on his exploring expedition, rifle in hand, and a good horse under him.  He crossed the ranges that continue northward the Great Smokies, and spent the summer in the beautiful hill country where the springs of the western waters flowed from the ground.  He had never seen so lovely a land.  The high valleys, through which the currents ran, were hemmed in by towering mountain walls, with cloud-capped peaks.  The fertile loam forming the bottoms was densely covered with the growth of the primaeval forest, broken here and there by glade-like openings, where herds of game grazed on the tall, thick grass.

Robertson was well treated by the few settlers, and stayed long enough to raise a crop of corn, the stand-by of the backwoods pioneer; like every other hunter, explorer, Indian fighter, and wilderness wanderer, he lived on the game he shot, and the small quantity of maize he was able to carry with him. In the late fall, however, when recrossing the mountain on his way home through the trackless forests, both game and corn failed him.  He lost his way, was forced to abandon his horse among impassable precipices, and finally found his rifle useless owing to the powder having become soaked.  For fourteen days he lived almost wholly on nuts and wild berries, and was on the point of death from starvation, when he met two hunters on horseback, who fed him and let him ride their horses by turns, and brought him safely to his home.

Such hardships were little more than matter-of-course incidents in a life like his; and he at once prepared to set out with his family for the new land.  His accounts greatly excited his neighbors, and sixteen families made ready to accompany him.  The little caravan started, under Robertson’s guidance, as soon as the ground had dried after the winter rains in the spring of 1771. They travelled in the usual style of backwoods emigrants:  the men on foot, rifle on shoulder, the elder children driving the lean cows, while the women, the young children, and the few household goods, and implements of husbandry, were carried on the backs of the pack-horses; for in settling the backwoods during the last century, the pack-horse played the same part that in the present century was taken by the canvas-covered emigrant wagon, the white-topped “prairie schooner.”

Once arrived at the Watauga, the Carolina new-comers mixed readily with the few Virginians already on the ground; and Robertson speedily became one of the leading men in the little settlement.  On an island in the river he built a house of logs with the bark still on them on the outside, though hewed smooth within; tradition says that it was the largest in the settlement.  Certainly it belonged to the better class of backwoods cabins, with a loft and several rooms, a roof of split saplings, held down by weighty poles, a log veranda in front, and a huge fire-place, of sticks or stones laid in clay, wherein the pile of blazing logs roared loudly in cool weather.  The furniture was probably precisely like that in other houses of the class; a rude bed, table, settee, and chest of drawers, a spinning-jenny, and either three-legged stools or else chairs with backs and seats of undressed deer hides.  Robertson’s energy and his remarkable natural ability brought him to the front at once, in every way; although, as already said, he had much less than even the average backwoods education, for he could not read when he was married, while most of the frontiersmen could not only read but also write, or at least sign their names.

Sevier, who came to the Watauga early in 1772, nearly a year after Robertson and his little colony had arrived, differed widely from his friend in almost every respect save highmindedness and dauntless, invincible courage.  He was a gentleman by birth and breeding, the son of a Huguenot who had settled in the Shenandoah Valley.  He had received a fair education, and though never fond of books, he was to the end of his days an interested and intelligent observer of men and things, both in America and Europe.  He corresponded on intimate and equal terms with Madison, Franklin, and others of our most polished statesmen; while Robertson’s letters, when he had finally learned to write them himself, were almost as remarkable for their phenomenally bad spelling as for their shrewd common-sense and homely, straightforward honesty.  Sevier was a very handsome man; during his lifetime he was reputed the handsomest in Tennessee.  He was tall, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, brown-haired, of slender build, with erect, military carriage and commanding bearing, his lithe, finely proportioned figure being well set off by the hunting-shirt which he almost invariably wore.  From his French forefathers he inherited a gay, pleasure-loving temperament, that made him the most charming of companions.  His manners were polished and easy, and he had great natural dignity.  Over the backwoodsmen he exercised an almost unbounded influence, due as much to his ready tact, invariable courtesy, and lavish, generous hospitality, as to the skill and dashing prowess which made him the most renowned Indian fighter of the Southwest.  He had an eager, impetuous nature, and was very ambitious, being almost as fond of popularity as of Indian-fighting. He was already married, and the father of two children, when he came to the Watauga, and, like Robertson, was seeking a new and better home for his family in the west.  So far, his life had been as uneventful as that of any other spirited young borderer; his business had been that of a frontier Indian trader; he had taken part in one or two unimportant Indian skirmishes. Later he was commissioned by Lord Dunmore as a captain in the Virginia line.

Such were Sevier and Robertson, the leaders in the little frontier outpost of civilization that was struggling to maintain itself on the Watauga; and these two men afterwards proved themselves to be, with the exception of George Rogers Clark, the greatest of the first generation of Trans-Alleghany pioneers.

Their followers were worthy of them.  All alike were keenly alive to the disadvantages of living in a community where there was neither law nor officer to enforce it.  Accordingly, with their characteristic capacity for combination, so striking as existing together with the equally characteristic capacity for individual self-help, the settlers determined to organize a government of their own.  They promptly put their resolution into effect early in the spring of 1772, Robertson being apparently the leader in the movement.

They decided to adopt written articles of agreement, by which their conduct should be governed; and these were known as the Articles of the Watauga Association.  They formed a written constitution, the first ever adopted west of the mountains, or by a community composed of American-born freemen.  It is this fact of the early independence and self-government of the settlers along the head-waters of the Tennessee that gives to their history its peculiar importance.  They were the first men of American birth to establish a free and independent community on the continent.  Even before this date, there had been straggling settlements of Pennsylvanians and Virginians along the head-waters of the Ohio; but these settlements remained mere parts of the colonies behind them, and neither grew into a separate community, nor played a distinctive part in the growth of the west.

The first step taken by the Watauga settlers, when they had determined to organize, was to meet in general convention, holding a kind of folk-thing, akin to the New England town-meeting.  They then elected a representative assembly, a small parliament or “witanagemot,” which met at Robertson’s station.  Apparently the freemen of each little fort or palisaded village, each blockhouse that was the centre of a group of detached cabins and clearings, sent a member to this first frontier legislature. It consisted of thirteen representatives, who proceeded to elect from their number five ­among them Sevier and Robertson ­to form a committee or court, which should carry on the actual business of government, and should exercise both judicial and executive functions.  This court had a clerk and a sheriff, or executive officer, who respectively recorded and enforced their decrees.  The five members of this court, who are sometimes referred to as arbitrators, and sometimes as commissioners, had entire control of all matters affecting the common weal; and all affairs in controversy were settled by the decision of a majority.  They elected one of their number as chairman, he being also ex-officio chairman of the committee of thirteen; and all their proceedings were noted for the prudence and moderation with which they behaved in their somewhat anomalous position.  They were careful to avoid embroiling themselves with the neighboring colonial legislatures; and in dealing with non-residents they made them give bonds to abide by their decision, thus avoiding any necessity of proceeding against their persons.  On behalf of the community itself, they were not only permitted to control its internal affairs, but also to secure lands by making treaties with a foreign power, the Indians; a distinct exercise of the right of sovereignty.  They heard and adjudicated all cases of difference between the settlers themselves; and took measures for the common safety.  In fact the dwellers, in this little outlying frontier commonwealth, exercised the rights of full statehood for a number of years; establishing in true American style a purely democratic government with representative institutions, in which, under certain restrictions, the will of the majority was supreme, while, nevertheless, the largest individual freedom, and the utmost liberty of individual initiative were retained.  The framers showed the American predilection for a written constitution or civil compact; and, what was more important, they also showed the common-sense American spirit that led them to adopt the scheme of government which should in the simplest way best serve their needs, without bothering their heads over mere high-sounding abstractions.

The court or committee held their sessions at stated and regular times, and took the law of Virginia as their standard for decisions.  They saw to the recording of deeds and wills, settled all questions of debt, issued marriage licenses, and carried on a most vigorous warfare against lawbreakers, especially horse-thieves. For six years their government continued in full vigor; then, in February, 1778, North Carolina having organized Washington County, which included all of what is now Tennessee, the governor of that State appointed justices of the peace and militia officers for the new county, and the old system came to an end.  But Sevier, Robertson, and their fellow-committeemen were all members of the new court, and continued almost without change their former simple system of procedure and direct and expeditious methods of administering justice; as justices of the peace they merely continued to act as they acted while arbitrators of the Watauga Association, and in their summary mode of dealing with evil-doers paid a good deal more heed to the essence than to the forms of law.  One record shows that a horse-thief was arrested on Monday, tried on Wednesday, and hung on Friday of the same week.  Another deals with a claimant who, by his attorney, moved to be sworn into his office of clerk, “but the court swore in James Sevier, well knowing that said Sevier had been elected,” and being evidently unwilling to waste their time hearing a contested election case when their minds were already made up as to the equity of the matter.  They exercised the right of making suspicious individuals leave the county. They also at times became censors of morals, and interfered with straightforward effectiveness to right wrongs for which a more refined and elaborate system of jurisprudence would have provided only cumbersome and inadequate remedies.  Thus one of their entries is to the effect that a certain man is ordered “to return to his family and demean himself as a good citizen, he having admitted in open court that he had left his wife and took up with another woman.”  From the character of the judges who made the decision, it is safe to presume that the delinquent either obeyed it or else promptly fled to the Indians for safety. This fleeing to the Indians, by the way, was a feat often performed by the worst criminals ­for the renegade, the man who had “painted his face” and deserted those of his own color, was a being as well known as he was abhorred and despised on the border, where such a deed was held to be the one unpardonable crime.

So much for the way in which the whites kept order among themselves.  The second part of their task, the adjustment of their relations with their red neighbors, was scarcely less important.  Early in 1772 Virginia made a treaty with the Cherokee Nation, which established as the boundary between them a line running west from White Top Mountain in latitude 36 degrees 30’. Immediately afterwards the agent of the British Government among the Cherokees ordered the Watauga settlers to instantly leave their lands.  They defied him, and refused to move:  but feeling the insecurity of their tenure they deputed two commissioners, of whom Robertson was one, to make a treaty with the Cherokees.  This was successfully accomplished, the Indians leasing to the associated settlers all the lands on the Watauga waters for the space of eight years, in consideration of about six thousand dollars’ worth of blankets, paint, muskets, and the like. The amount advanced was reimbursed to the men advancing it by the sale of the lands in small parcels to new settlers, for the time of the lease.

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, 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 in 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 Boon’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.

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. 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.

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. 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.