V.7 COPYRIGHT 1889, 1894, 1896 By G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS This edition is published under arrangement with CONTENTS VII. ROBERTSON FOUNDS THE CUMBERLAND SETTLE- VIII. THE CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS TO THE CLOSE THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST (CONTINUED) CHAPTER VII ROBERTSON FOUNDS THE CUMBERLAND SETTLE R MENT, 1779-1780 OBERTSON had no share in the glory of King's Mountain, and no part in the subsequent career of the men who won it; for, at the time, he was doing his allotted work, a work of at least equal importance, in a different field. The year before the mountaineers faced Ferguson, the man who had done more than any one in founding the settlements from which the victors came, had once more gone into the wilderness to build a new and even more typical frontier commonwealth, the westernmost of any yet founded by the backwoods men. Robertson had been for ten years a leader among the Holston and Watauga people. He had at different times played the foremost part in organizing the civil government and in repelling outside attack. He had been particularly successful in his dealings with the Indians, and by his missions to them had managed to keep the peace unbroken on more than one occasion when a war would have been disastrous to the whites. He was prosperous and suc VOL. VII.- -I cessful in his private affairs; nevertheless, in 1779, the restless craving for change and adventure surged so strongly in his breast that it once more drove him forth to wander in the forest.. In the true border temper he determined to abandon the home he had made, and to seek out a new one hundreds of miles further in the heart of the hunting-grounds of the red warriors. The point pitched upon was the beautiful country lying along the great bend of the Cumberland. Many adventurous settlers were anxious to accompany Robertson, and, like him, to take their wives. and children with them into the new land. It was agreed that a small party of explorers should go first in the early spring to plant corn, that the families might have it to eat when they followed in the fall. The spot was already well known to hunters. Who had first visited it can not be said; though tradition has kept the names of several among the many who at times halted there while on their wanderings.1 Old Kasper Mansker and others had made hunting trips thither for ten years past; and they had sometimes met the creole trappers from 1 One Stone or Stoner, perhaps Boone's old associate, is the first whose name is given in the books. But in both Kentucky and Tennessee it is idle to try to find out exactly who the first explorers were. They were unlettered woodsmen; it is only by chance that some of their names have been kept and others lost; the point to be remembered is that many hunters were wandering over the land at the same time, that they drifted to many different places, and that now and then an accident preserved the name of some hunter and of some place he visited. |