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Updated: June 25, 2025
The Indian delegate made a favorable report in January, 1775; and then the Overhill Cherokees were bidden to assemble at the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga. The order was issued by the head-chief, Oconostota, a very old man, renowned for the prowess he had shown in former years when warring against the English.
Of course, the only hope of assistance was from Virginia, North Carolina being separated from the Watauga people by great mountain chains; and Sevier had already notified the officers of Fincastle that the Indians were advancing.
The plight in which the Watauga settlers now found themselves was truly desperate; and the way in which they surmounted this apparently insuperable difficulty is one of the most striking and characteristic events in the pre-Revolutionary history of the Old Southwest. It exhibits the indomitable will and fertile resource of the American character at the margin of desperation.
The nearest points at which these necessaries could be procured were the Watauga and Holston River settlements, which were themselves none too well stocked.
The one at Watauga received the name of Fort Lee. All the able-bodied males sixteen years of age and over were enrolled, put under competent officers, and drilled for the coming struggle. But the winter passed without any further act of hostility on the part of the disaffected Cherokees.
Next to the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, the coming together of those two bodies of emigrants on the Watauga was the most important event which up to that time had occurred in American history; but it was no more important than the meeting there of John Sevier and James Robertson, for, humanly speaking, had those two men not met, and acted thereafter in harmony together, the civilization there planted could never have survived the struggle it was destined to encounter with savage foes and fratricidal enemies.
It will be remembered that one of the things written by Sevier into the only Watauga document extant was that they desired to become "in every way the best members of society." Frankland's aims, as recorded, included the intent to "improve agriculture, perfect manufacturing, ENCOURAGE LITERATURE and every thing truly laudable."
Our position at the gap was high in the cleft of Bays Mountain through which the railway passes and then turns southeastward to the Nolachucky. The road then goes up the valley of that stream and over a ridge to the Watauga, which runs to the northwest, joining the Holston again by a route which is nearly at right angles to the general trend of the valley.
The records show that he was reinstated as Brigadier General of the Western Counties and also appointed at the head of the Committee on Indian Affairs. Not only in the region about Watauga did the pioneers of Tennessee endure the throes of danger and strife during these years.
He had been joined by refugee tories from the Watauga, who could have piloted him thither; and perhaps he intended to make his threats good. It seems more likely that he paid little heed to the mountaineers, scorning their power to do him hurt; though he did not regard them with the haughty and ignorant disdain usually felt for such irregulars by the British army officers.
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