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Again the Wataugans, augmented by a detachment from Sullivan County, galloped forth, met the red warriors, chastised them heavily, put them to rout, burned their dwellings and provender, and drove them back into their hiding places.
Having driven Stuart into Charleston, Sevier and his active Wataugans returned home, now perhaps looking forward to a rest, which they had surely earned. Once more, however, they were hailed with alarming news. Dragging Canoe had come to life again and was emerging from the caves of the Tennessee with a substantial force of Chickamaugan warriors.
We are not told who took the lead when they left the known trail, but we may suppose it was Sevier and his Wataugans, for the making of new warpaths and wild riding were two of the things which distinguished Nolichucky Jack's leadership. Down the steep side of the mountain, finding their way as they plunged, went the overhill men.
They had numerous offenders to deal with, for men fleeing from debt or from the consequence of crime sought the new settlements just across the mountains as a safe and adjacent harbor. The attempt of these men to pursue their lawlessness in Watauga was one reason why the Wataugans organized a government.
Ferguson turned his horse's head downhill and charged into the Wataugans, hacking right and left with his sword till it was broken at the hilt. A dozen rifles were leveled at him. An iron muzzle pushed at his breast, but the powder flashed in the pan. He swerved and struck at the rifleman with his broken hilt.
It should be chronicled that Sevier, assisted possibly by other Wataugans, eventually returned to the State of North Carolina the money which he had forcibly borrowed to finance the King's Mountain expedition; and that neither he nor Shelby received any pay for their services, nor asked it.
Perhaps the lurking smile on John Sevier's face was a flicker of mirth that there should be found any man, red or white, with temerity enough to try conclusions with him. None ever did, successfully. The historians of Tennessee state that the Wataugans formed their government in 1772 and that Sevier was one of its five commissioners.
Sevier and his Wataugans had gone by Gillespie's Gap, over the pathway that hung like a narrow ribbon about the breast of Roan Mountain, lifting its crest in dignified isolation sixty-three hundred feet above the levels. The "Unakas" was the name the Cherokees had given to those white men who first invaded their hills; and the Unakas is the name that white men at last gave to the mountain.
At daybreak on the 26th of September they mustered at the Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga, over a thousand strong. It was a different picture they made from that other great gathering at the same spot when Henderson had made his purchase in money of the Dark and Bloody Ground, and Sevier and Robertson had bought for the Wataugans this strip of Tennessee. There were no Indians in this picture.
Nolichucky Jack spurred out in front of his men and rode along the line. Fired by his courage they sounded the war whoop again and renewed the attack with fury. "These are the same yelling devils that were at Musgrove's Mill," said Captain De Peyster to Ferguson. Now Shelby and Sevier, leading his Wataugans, had reached the summit. The firing circle pressed in.
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