第39章 Chapter VIII. Tennessee(3)

Next year a young Virginian from the Shenandoah Valley rode on down Holston Valley on a hunting and exploring trip, and loitered at Watauga. Here he found not only a new settlement but an independent government in the making; and forthwith he determined to have a part in both. This young Virginian had already shown the inclination of a political colonist, for in the Shenandoah Valley he had, at the age of nineteen, laid out the town of New Market (which exists to this day) and had directed its municipal affairs and invited and fostered its clergy. This young Virginian--born on September 23, 1745, and so in 1772 twenty-seven years of age--was John Sevier, that John Sevier whose monument now towers from its site in Knoxville to testify of both the wild and the great deeds of old Tennessee's beloved knight. Like Robertson, Sevier hastened home and removed his whole family, including his wife and children, his parents and his brothers and sisters, to this new haven of freedom at Watauga.

The friendship formed between Robertson and Sevier in these first years of their work together was never broken, yet two more opposite types could hardly have been brought together. Robertson was a man of humble origin, unlettered, not a dour Scot but a solemn one. Sevier was cavalier as well as frontiersman. On his father's side he was of the patrician family of Xavier in France.

His progenitors, having become Huguenots, had taken refuge in England, where the name Xavier was finally changed to Sevier.

John Sevier's mother was an Englishwoman. Some years before his birth his parents had emigrated to the Shenandoah Valley. Thus it happened that John Sevier, who mingled good English blood with the blue blood of old France, was born an American and grew up a frontier hunter and soldier. He stood about five feet nine from his moccasins to his crown of light brown hair. He was well-proportioned and as graceful of body as he was hard-muscled and swift. His chin was firm, his nose of a Roman cast, his mouth well-shaped, its slightly full lips slanting in a smile that would not be repressed. Under the high, finely modeled brow, small keen dark blue eyes sparkled with health, with intelligence, and with the man's joy in life.

John Sevier indeed cannot be listed as a type; he was individual.

There is no other character like him in border annals. He was cavalier and prince in his leadership of men; he had their homage. Yet he knew how to be comrade and brother to the lowliest. He won and held the confidence and friendship of the serious-minded Robertson no less than the idolatry of the wildest spirits on the frontier throughout the forty-three years of the spectacular career which began for him on the day he brought his tribe to Watauga. In his time he wore the governor's purple; and a portrait painted of him shows how well this descendant of the noble Xaviers could fit himself to the dignity and formal habiliments of state; Yet in the fringed deerskin of frontier garb, he was fleeter on the warpath than the Indians who fled before him; and he could outride and outshoot--and, it is said, outswear--the best and the worst of the men who followed him.

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. Yet, as Sevier did not settle in Tennessee before 1773, it is possible that the Watauga Association was not formed until then. Unhappily the written constitution of the little commonwealth was not preserved; but it is known that, following the Ulsterman's ideal, manhood suffrage and religious independence were two of its provisions. The commissioners enlisted a militia and they recorded deeds for land, issued marriage licenses, and tried offenders against the law. They believed themselves to be within the boundaries of Virginia and therefore adopted the laws of that State for their guidance. 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.

When the line was run between Virginia and North Carolina beyond the mountains, Watauga was discovered to be south of Virginia's limits and hence on Indian lands. This was in conflict with the King's Proclamation, and Alexander Cameron, British agent to the Cherokees, accordingly ordered the encroaching settlers to depart. The Indians, however, desired them to remain. But since it was illegal to purchase Indian lands, Robertson negotiated a lease for ten years. In 1775, when Henderson made his purchase from the Cherokees, at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga, Robertson and Sevier, who were present at the sale with other Watauga commissioners, followed Henderson's example and bought outright the lands they desired to include in Watauga's domain. In 1776 they petitioned North Carolina for "annexation." As they were already within North Carolina's bounds, it was recognition rather than annexation which they sought. This petition, which is the only Wataugan document to survive, is undated but marked as received in August, 1776. It is in Sevier's handwriting and its style suggests that it was composed by him, for in its manner of expression it has much in common with many later papers from his pen. That Wataugans were a law-loving community and had formed their government for the purpose of making law respected is reiterated throughout the document. As showing the quality of these first western statemakers, two paragraphs are quoted: