University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XVII

THE COLONIZATION OF THE CUMBERLAND

TO the settlements in Tennessee and Kentucky,
which they had seized and occupied,
the pioneers held on with a tenacious
grip which never relaxed. From these strongholds,
won through sullen and desperate
strokes, they pushed deeper into the wilderness,
once again to meet with undimmed courage
the bitter onslaughts of their resentful foes.

The crushing of the Cherokees in 1776 relieved
the pressure upon the Tennessee settlers, enabling
them to strengthen their hold and prepare
effectively for future eventualities; the
possession of the gateway to Kentucky kept
free the passage for Western settlement;
Watauga and its defenders continued to offer
a formidable barrier to British invasion of the
East from Kentucky and the Northwest during
the Revolution; while these Tennessee
frontiersmen were destined soon to set forth
again to invade a new wilderness and at frightful
cost to colonize the Cumberland.

The little chain of stockades along the far-flung
frontier of Kentucky was tenaciously
held by the bravest of the race, grimly resolved
that this chain must not break. The
Revolution precipitated against this chain
wave after wave of formidable Indian foes
from the Northwest under British leadership.
At the very time when Griffith Rutherford set
out for the relief of McDowell's Fort, a
marauding Indian band captured by stealth
near the Transylvania Fort, known as Boone's

THE CAPTURE OF JEMIMA BOONE AND THE CALLAWAY GIRLS BY THE INDIANS

From a painting by J. F. Millet

Fort (Boonesborough), Elizabeth and Frances
Callaway, and Jemima Boone, the daughters
of Richard Callaway and Daniel Boone,
and rapidly marched them away toward the
Shawanoe towns on the Ohio. A relief party,
in two divisions, headed respectively by the
young girls' fathers, and composed among
others of the lovers of the three girls, Samuel
Henderson, John Holder, and Flanders
Callaway, pursued them with almost incredible
swiftness. Guided by broken twigs and
bits of cloth surreptitiously dropped by Elizabeth
Callaway, they finally overtook the unsuspecting
savages, killed two of them, and
rescued the three maidens unharmed. This
romantic episode—which gave Fenimore
Cooper the theme for the most memorable
scene in one of his Leatherstocking Tales—
had an even more romantic sequel in the subsequent
marriage of the three pairs of lovers.

This bold foray, so shrewdly executed and
even more sagaciously foiled, was a true precursor
of the dread happenings of the coming
years. Soon the red men were lurking in the

neighborhood of the stations; and relief was
felt when the Transylvania Fort, the great
stockade planned by Judge Henderson, was
completed by the pioneers (July, 1776).
Glad tidings arrived only a few days later
when the Declaration of Independence, read
aloud from the Virginia Gazette, was greeted
with wild huzzas by the patriotic backwoodsmen.
During the ensuing months occasional
invasions were made by savage bands; but it
was not until April 24, 1777, that Henderson's
"big fort" received its first attack, being
invested by a company of some seventy-five
savages. The twenty-two riflemen in the fort
drove off the painted warriors, but not before
Michael Stoner, Daniel Boone, and several
others were severely wounded. As he lay
helpless upon the ground, his ankle shattered
by a bullet, Boone was lifted by Simon Kenton
and borne away upon his shoulders to the
haven of the stockade amid a veritable shower
of balls. The stoical and taciturn Boone
clasped Kenton's hand and gave him the accolade
of the wilderness in the brief but heartfelt
utterance; "You are a fine fellow." On
July 4th of this same year the fort was again
subjected to siege, when two hundred gaudily
painted savages surrounded it for two days.
But owing to the vigilance and superb markmanship
of the defenders, as well as to the lack
of cannon by the besieging force, the Indians
reluctantly abandoned the siege, after leaving
a number dead upon the field. Soon afterward
the arrival of two strong bodies of prime
riflemen, who had been hastily summoned from
the frontiers of North Carolina and Virginia,
once again made firm the bulwark of white
supremacy in the West.

Kentucky's terrible year, 1778, opened with
a severe disaster to the white settlers—when
Boone with thirty men, while engaged in making
salt at the "Lower Salt Spring," was captured
in February by more than a hundred
Indians, sent by Governor Hamilton of Detroit
to drive the white settlers from "Kentucke."
Boone remained in captivity until
early summer, when, learning that his Indian
captors were planning an attack in force upon

the Transylvania Fort, he succeeded in effecting
his escape. After a break-neck journey
of one hundred and sixty miles, during which
he ate but one meal, Boone finally arrived at
the big fort on June 20th. The settlers were
thus given ample time for preparation, as the
long siege did not begin until September 7th.
The fort was invested by a powerful force
flying the English flag—four hundred and
forty-four savages gaudy in the vermilion and
ochre of their war-paint, and eleven Frenchmen,
the whole being commanded by the
French-Canadian, Captain Dagniaux de Quindre,
and the great Indian Chief, Black-fish,
who had adopted Boone as a son.[1] In the
effort to gain his end de Quindre resorted to
a dishonorable stratagem, by which he hoped
to outwit the settlers and capture the fort with
but slight loss. "They formed a scheme to
deceive us," says Boone, "declaring it was their
orders, from Governor Hamilton, to take us
captives, and not to destroy us; but if nine
of us would come out and treat with them, they
would immediately withdraw their forces from
our walls, and return home peacably." Transparent
as the stratagem was, Boone incautiously
agreed to a conference with the enemy;
Callaway alone took the precaution to guard
against Indian duplicity. After a long talk,
the Indians proposed to Boone, Callaway, and
the seven or eight pioneers who accompanied
them that they shake hands in token of peace
and friendship. As picturesquely described
by Daniel Trabue:

During the siege Callaway, the leader of the
pioneers, made a wooden cannon wrapped with
wagon tires, which on being fired at a group
of Indians "made them scamper perdidiously."
The secret effort of the Indians to tunnel a
way underground into the fort, being discovered
by the defenders, was frustrated by a
countermine. Unable to outwit, outfight, or
outmaneuver the resourceful Callaway, de
Quindre finally withdrew on September 16th,
closing the longest and severest attack that any
of the fortified stations of Kentucky had ever
been called upon to withstand.

The successful defense of the Transylvania
Fort, made by these indomitable backwoodsmen
who were lost sight of by the Continental
Congress and left to fight alone their battles
in the forests, was of national significance in
its results. Had the Transylvania Fort fallen,
the northern Indians in overwhelming numbers,
directed by Hamilton and led by British
officers, might well have swept Kentucky free
of defenders and fallen with devastating force
upon the exposed settlements along the western

frontiers of North Carolina, Virginia, and
Pennsylvania. This defense of Boonesborough,
therefore, is deserving of commemoration
in the annals of the Revolution, along with
Lexington and Bunker's Hill. Coupled with
Clark's meteoric campaign in the Northwest
and the subsequent struggles in the defense
of Kentucky, it may be regarded as an
event basically responsible for the retention of
the trans-Alleghany region by the United
States. The bitter struggles, desperate sieges,
and bloody reprisals of these dark years came
to a close with the expeditions of Clark and
Logan in November, 1782, which appropriately
concluded the Revolution in the West
by putting a definite end to all prospect of
formidable invasion of Kentucky.

In November, 1777, "Washington District,"
the delegates of which had been received in the
preceding year by the Provincial Congress of
North Carolina, was formed by the North
Carolina General Assembly into Washington
County; and to it were assigned the boundaries
of the whole of the present state of Tennessee.

While this immense territory was thus being
definitely included within the bounds of North
Carolina, Judge Henderson on behalf of the
Transylvania Company was making a vigorous
effort to secure the reëstablishment of its rights
from the Virginia Assembly. By order of the
Virginia legislature, an exhaustive investigation
of the claims of the Transylvania Company
was therefore made, hearings being held
at various points in the back country. On
July 18, 1777, Judge Henderson presented
to the peace commissioners for North Carolina
and Virginia at the Long Island treaty ground
an elaborate memorial in behalf of the Transylvania
Company, which the commissioners
unanimously refused to consider, as not coming
under their jurisdiction.[3] Finally, after
a full and impartial discussion before the Virginia
House of Delegates, that body declared
the Transylvania purchase void.[4] But in
consideration of "the very great expense [incurred
by the company] in making the said
purchase, and in settling the said lands, by
which the commonwealth is likely to receive
great advantage, by increasing its inhabitants,
and establishing a barrier against the Indians,"
the House of Delegates granted Richard Henderson
and Company two hundred thousand
acres of land situated between the Ohio and
Green rivers, where the town of Henderson,
Kentucky, now stands.[5] With this bursting
of the Transylvania bubble and the vanishing
of the golden dreams of Henderson and his associates
for establishing the fourteenth American
colony in the heart of the trans-Alleghany,
a first romantic chapter in the history of Westward
expansion comes to a close.

But another and more feasible project immediately
succeeded. Undiscouraged by Virginia's
confiscation of Transylvania, and disregarding
North Carolina's action in extending
her boundaries over the trans-Alleghany
region lying within her chartered limits, Henderson,
in whom the genius of the colonizer
and the ambition of the speculative capitalist
were found in striking conjunction, was now
inspired to repeat, along broader and more
solidly practical lines, the revolutionary experiment

of Transylvania. It was not his
purpose, however, to found an independent
colony; for he believed that millions of acres
in the Transylvania purchase lay within the
bounds of North Carolina, and he wished to
open for colonization, settlement, and the sale
of lands, the vast wilderness of the valley of
the Cumberland supposed to lie within those
confines. But so universal was the prevailing
uncertainty in regard to boundaries that it was
necessary to prolong the North Carolina-Virginia
line in order to determine whether or not
the Great French Lick, the ideal location for
settlement, lay within the chartered limits of
North Carolina.[6]

Judge Henderson's comprehensive plans
for the promotion of an extensive colonization
of the Cumberland region soon began to take
form in vigorous action. Just as in his Transylvania
project Henderson had chosen Daniel
Boone, the ablest of the North Carolina
pioneers, to spy out the land and select sites
for future location, so now he chose as leader
of the new colonizing party the ablest of the

Tennessee pioneers, James Robertson. Although
he was the acknowledged leader of the
Watauga settlement and held the responsible
position of Indian agent for North Carolina,
Robertson was induced by Henderson's liberal
offers to leave his comparatively peaceful home
and to venture his life in this desperate hazard
of new fortunes. The advance party of eight
white men and one negro, under Robertson's
leadership, set forth from the Holston settlement
on February 6, 1779, to make a preliminary
exploration and to plant corn "that
bread might be prepared for the main body
of emigrants in the fall." After erecting a
few cabins for dwellings and posts of defense,
Robertson plunged alone into the wilderness
and made the long journey to Post St. Vincent
in the Illinois, in order to consult with
George Rogers Clark, who had entered for
himself in the Virginia Land Office several
thousand acres of land at the French Lick.
After perfecting arrangements with Clark for
securing "cabin rights" should the land prove
to lie in Virginia, Robertson returned to Watauga
to take command of the migration.

Toward the end of the year two parties set
out, one by land, the other by water, for the
wonderful new country on the Cumberland
of which Boone and Scaggs and Mansker had
brought back such glowing descriptions. During
the autumn Judge Henderson and other
commissioners from North Carolina, in conjunction
with commissioners from Virginia,
had been running out the boundary line between
the two states. On the very day—
Christmas, 1779—that Judge Henderson
reached the site of the Transylvania Fort, now
called Boonesborough, the swarm of colonists
from the parent hive at Watauga, under Robertson's
leadership, reached the French Lick:
and on New Year's Day, 1780, crossed the
river on the ice to the present site of Nashville.

The journal of the other party, which, as
has been aptly said, reads like a chapter from
one of Captain Mayne Reid's fascinating
novels of adventure, was written by Colonel
John Donelson, the father-in-law of Andrew
Jackson. Setting out from Fort Patrick

Henry on Holston River, December 22, 1779,
with a flotilla consisting of about thirty flatboats,
dugouts, and canoes, they encountered
few difficulties until they began to run the
gauntlet of the Chickamauga towns on the
Tennessee. Here they were furiously attacked
by the Indians, terrible in their red and
black war-paint; and a well-filled boat lagging
in the rear, with smallpox on board, was driven
to shore by the Indians. The occupants were
massacred; but the Indians at once contracted
the disease and died by the hundreds. This
luckless sacrifice of "poor Stuart, his family
and friends," while a ghastly price to pay, undoubtedly
procured for the Cumberland settlements
comparative immunity from Indian
forays until the new-comers had firmly established
themselves in their wilderness stronghold.
Eloquent of the granite endurance and
courageous spirit of the typical American pioneer
in its thankfulness for sanctuary, for reunion
of families and friends, and for the humble
shelter of a log cabin, is the last entry in
Donelson's diary (April 24, 1780):

In the midst of the famine during this terrible
period of the "hard winter," Judge Henderson
was sorely concerned for the fate of the
new colony which he had projected, and immediately
proceeded to purchase at huge cost a
large stock of corn. On March 5, 1780, this
corn, which had been raised by Captain Nathaniel
Hart, was "sent from Boonesborough
in perogues [pettiaugers or flatboats] under
the command of William Bailey Smith. . . .
This corn was taken down the Kentucky River,
and over the Falls of Ohio, to the mouth of
the Cumberland, and thence up that river to

the fort at the French Lick. It is believed
to have been the only bread which the settlers
had until it was raised there in 1781."[8]
There is genuine impressiveness in this heroic
triumphing over the obstacles of obdurate nature
and this paternalistic provision for the
exposed Cumberland settlement—the purchase
by Judge Henderson, the shipment by
Captain Hart, and the transportation by
Colonel Smith, in an awful winter of bitter
cold and obstructed navigation, of this indispensable
quantity of corn purchased for sixty
thousand dollars in depreciated currency.

Upon his arrival at the French Lick, shortly
after the middle of April, Judge Henderson
at once proceeded to organize a government
for the little community. On May 1st articles
of association were drawn up; and important
additions thereto were made on May
13th, when the settlers signed the complete
series. The original document, still preserved,
was drafted by Judge Henderson, being written
throughout in his own handwriting; and
his name heads the list of two hundred and

fifty and more signatures.[9] The "Cumberland
Compact," as this paper is called, is fundamentally
a mutual contract between the copartners
of the Transylvania Company and
the settlers upon the lands claimed by the company.
It represents the collective will of the
community; and on account of the careful provisions
safeguarding the rights of each party
to the contract it may be called a bill of rights.
The organization of this pure democracy was
sound and admirable—another notable early
example of the commission form of government.
The most remarkable feature of this
backwoods constitution marks Judge Henderson
as a pioneer in the use of the political device
so prominent to-day, one hundred and
forty years later—the "recall of judges." In
the following striking clause this innovation
in government was recognized thus early in
American history as the most effective means
of securing and safeguarding justice in a
democracy:

A land-office was now opened, the entry-taker
being appointed by Judge Henderson,
in accordance with the compact; and the lands,
for costs of entry, etc., were registered for the
nominal fee of ten dollars per thousand acres.
But as the Transylvania Company was never
able to secure a "satisfactory and indisputable
title," the clause resulted in perpetual nonpayment.
In 1783, following the lead of Virginia
in the case of Transylvania, North Carolina
declared the Transylvania Company's
purchase void, but granted the company in
compensation a tract of one hundred and
ninety thousand acres in Powell's Valley.[10]
As compensation, the grants of North Carolina
and Virginia were quite inadequate, considering
the value of the service in behalf of

permanent western colonization rendered by
the Transylvania company.[11]

James Robertson was chosen as presiding
officer of the court of twelve commissioners,
and was also elected commander-in-chief of
the military forces of the eight little associated
settlements on the Cumberland. Here for the
next two years the self-reliant settlers under
Robertson's wise and able leadership successfully
repelled the Indians in their guerrilla
warfare, firmly entrenched themselves in their
forest-girt stronghold, and vindicated their
claim to the territory by right of occupation
and conquest. Here sprang up in later times
a great and populous city—named, strangely
enough, neither for Henderson, the founder,
nor for Robertson and Donelson, the leaders
of the two colonizing parties, but for one having
no association with its history or origins,
the gallant North Carolinian, General Francis
Nash, who was killed at the Battle of Germantown.