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By hunting, the explorers must feed themselves on their travels and with deerskins and furs they must on their return recompense those who had supplied their outfit. Boone, the incessant but not always lucky wanderer, was in these years ever in debt for an outfit. Boone and Hill made their way over the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies and crossed the Holston and Clinch rivers.
The general had sent his proposal to me to join him, the very day Longstreet reached the Holston River at Loudon, and when it had become evident that the Confederates were committed to an active campaign in East Tennessee. General Hartsuff had found that he could not endure the work, and had decided to leave before Knoxville should be invested.
The Watauga is not easily fordable at an ordinary stage of water, and thus the triangle between the Holston on the left, the Watauga in front, and the Nolachucky on the right, made the debatable ground of the upper valley.
The chief boat, the flag-ship of the flotilla, was the Adventure, a great scow, in which there were over thirty men, besides the families of some of them. They embarked at Holston, Long Island, on December 22d, but falling water and heavy frosts detained them two months, and the voyage did not really begin until they left Cloud Creek on February 27, 1780. The first ten days were uneventful.
During these years the Holston settlers principally busied themselves in making their position secure, as well as in setting their house in order by severely punishing the lawless Tory element among them.
General Sturgis was making a reconnoissance of the country between the French Broad and the Holston rivers, sending the cavalry partly toward Dandridge on the former stream, under command of Colonel Foster, and partly toward Morristown, under Brigadier-General W. L. Elliott of the Cumberland army. Elliott was supported by Mott's brigade of infantry, part of which acted under his orders.
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.
On one point he was very positive: the Cherokees, he insisted, would not join the Ohio tribes, despite the murder of Oconostota's brother. Could the people of the Clinch and Holston have felt the same confidence, they would have spared themselves much nagging. I took my time in returning to Salem, for there was much to think over. The bulk of my meditations concerned Patsy Dale.
The great trestle bridge across the Holston was examined, and the features of the topography which made Strawberry Plains an important point in military operations covering Knoxville and the line of communication with Cumberland Gap.
A careful exploration of the valley of the Little Tennessee River, from the point where it leaves the mountains to its confluence with the Holston, was made, and the various mound groups were located and surveyed. As these mounds when explored yielded precisely the kind of ornaments and implements used by the Cherokees, it is reasonable to believe they built them.
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