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Updated: June 25, 2025
The frontiersmen who chopped the first trails across the Alleghanies, who earliest wandered through the lonely western lands, and who first built stockaded hamlets on the banks of the Watauga, the Kentucky, and the Cumberland, acted each in consequence of his own restless eagerness for adventure and possible gain.
In 1768, the year in which William Bean built his cabin on the bank of the Watauga, five hundred armed Regulators in North Carolina, aroused by irregularities in the conduct of public office, gathered to assert their displeasure, but dispersed peaceably on receipt of word from Governor Tryon that he had ordered the prosecution of any officer found guilty of extortion.
Kentucky, for instance, had been succored more than once by troops raised among the Watauga Carolinians or the Holston Virginians, and in her turn she had sent needed supplies to the Cumberland. But when the strain of the war was over the separatist spirit asserted itself very strongly. Character of the Pioneer Population.
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. Then called the Cherokee.
Meanwhile, Oconostota, with his three hundred and fifty warriors, had followed the trail along the Nolachucky, and on the morning of the 20th had come upon the house of William Bean, the hospitable entertainer of Robertson on his first visit to Watauga, Bean himself was at the fort, to which had fled all the women and children in the settlement, but his wife had preferred to remain at home.
That brief and now forgotten State, Frankland, the Land of the Free, which bequeathed its name as an appellation for America, was founded as Watauga had been founded to meet the practical needs and aspirations of its people.
The momentous influence of the Watauga settlers, inadequately reckoned hitherto by historians, was soon to make itself powerfully felt in the first epochal movement of westward expansion. They Fought and bled for it. And had it not been for the memorable Battle, at the Great Kanaway those vast regions had yet continued inaccessable. The Harrodsburg Petition. June 7-15, 1776.
"They ain't as well polished as I'd like to have 'em and I think they might be a little longer in the shank. There ought to be a ring of babbit metal around that slot, too I reckon I could get it in Watauga. If you'll let me take 'em now, I'll fix 'em up for you soon as I can, so that they'll do fine."
Then he called Tom McChesney to him and questioned him closely about our journey, the signs we had seen, and, finally, the news in the Watauga settlements. While this was going on the others gathered round them. "What now?" asked Cowan, when he had finished. "Back to Harrodstown," answered the Colonel, shortly.
Of the five members of the "court" or governing committee of Watauga, three were of Virginian birth, one came from South Carolina, and the origin of the other is not specified. Ramsey, 107. In Collins, II., 345, is an account of what may be termed a type family of these frontier barbarians.
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