Opposition: John Sevier

Life on the frontier required a variety of skills and to be willing to wear several hats.  Men who took the lead in settling the backcountry had to be soldier, politician, judge and diplomat all at the same time.  John Sevier (1745-1815) was all of the above, and considered a founding father of the United States and the State of Tennessee.

Seiver was born in Rockingham County, Virginia, the descendant of French Huguenot (Protestant) refugees from France.  John followed his father as a tavern keeper and helped found the town of Newmarket.  He married at age 16 in 1761, an early age for a man even in those days, and settled down to a life of farming.  The usual ritual of frontier strife intruded in the form of Lord Dunmore's War, 1774, where Sevier served as a captain under George Washington's command in the Virginia Militia.  Meanwhile, he and his brothers had been making trips to what is now Tennessee.  In 1773, he moved his family to a new home along the Holston River.  Later, they relocated to near what is now Elizabethtown, in what were then known as the Watauga Settlements, in the heart of Overmountain country.  The Watauga Association formed their own government on land leased from the Cherokee.  Sevier served as clerk and later magistrate on the court.

Despite disapproval from Crown authorities, the Watauga Association purchased their lands outright from the Cherokee.  For these backcountry settlers, the right to settle on land meant more to them than taxation without representation, and would be at the heart of their issues with England.  As the Revolution spread to colony after colony and out to the frontier, Sevier was part of a Committee of Safety, formed to organize money, men and materiel for the war effort.  In an effort to more formalize their existence, the Wataugans petitioned to make their settlement part of Virginia.  Virginia declined.  They then petitioned North Carolina.  While that was going on, Dragging Canoe of the Cherokee was far more of a threat than Redcoats.  They began building Fort Lee in the Nolichucky Valley.  However, Cherokee Beloved Woman Nancy Ward got word to Sevier of a large invasion force of Dragging Canoe's men.  The settlers fled the Nolichucky and headed to Fort Caswell.  Sevier would help head the defense of the Fort.

As forces under Cherokee leader Old Abraham enveloped Fort Caswell, a settler by the name of Catherine Sherrill made a last minute run for the gates, which were already closing.  Sevier reached down and pulled her up the wall to safety.  Later, after the death of his first wife, she would become his second.  The Fort held out and the Cherokee retreated.  As the Wataugans sent yet another delegation to North Carolina, they formed the District of Washington, which included most of modern Tennessee.  This entity was later made Washington County as part of North Carolina.  Sevier was placed in charge of the County militia.  He would lead his militia, composed of Overmountain men, to the Battle of Kings Mountain in October, 1780. 

The Cherokees would demand his attention once more as the Cherokee-American War ground on.  Nancy Ward once again warned Sevier of another maneuver by Dragging Canoe.  On December 16, 1780, he routed a force of Cherokee near what is now Sevierville.  He captured and destroyed the Cherokee towns of Chillhowee and Tallassee (not to be confused with the Creek town of the same name).  He also burned Great Hiawasee and Chestoee.  In 1781 and 1782 he would lead other punitive raids against the Cherokee in North Carolina and later Georgia and Alabama. 

North Carolina decided to cede its backcountry lands to the federal government.  While the Continental Congress took its time, the citizens formed the State of Franklin, which was never formally recognized by the United States.  Sevier was elected governor of the state in 1785.  The next few years were taken up with competing land claims by the federal government, North Carolina and the Cherokee.  Sevier would win several more battles with the Cherokee, but at one point was outlawed by North Carolina, who accused him of treason because he continued to push for recognition of Franklin as a separate state.  In time, he would patch things up with North Carolina authorities, being elected a state senator in 1789, just in time to help with ratification of the new constitution.  Then, again in 1789, North Carolina once more unloaded its claim to Tennessee to the federal government. 

In 1790, Congress created the Southwest Territory and Sevier was appointed Brigadier General of the State militia.  In that capacity in 1793, he led his forces at the Battle of Hightower, which we've already covered in a previous post.  In 1796, when Tennessee was admitted to the Union, Sevier was elected governor.  He would serve six two-year terms as governor but he was already being eclipsed by a young upstart named Andrew Jackson.  The two of them almost dueled in 1803.  Later, he served in the House of Representatives, but died in 1815 in Alabama, helping to survey the lands Jackson had seized from the Creek tribe.  He was buried along the historical Tallapoosa River, but his remains were later relocated to the courthouse lawn in Knoxville, Tennessee.
   

Settlers versus Natives: Battle of Hightower, October 17, 1793

The Cherokee-American War (1775-1794) was one of the longest-running conflicts between Natives and Settlers, skirmishes on frontier towns and settlements and raids on Native villages punctuated by pitched battles.  The Battle of Hightower, sometimes called the Battle of Etowah, after a nearby Cherokee village, was one of these contests.

In the 1785 Treaty of Hopewell, the Cherokee agreed a specific set of boundaries for their homeland and hunting range.  This included areas in Tennessee, eastern North and South Carolina, nd Northern Georgia.  They also received assurances that the United States would keep trespassers out of Cherokee land.  If anyone trespassed on Native land, they could be punished as the Cherokee saw fit, with the exception of anyone accused of murdering a Cherokee.  These were to be punished by American jurisdiction.  The Cherokee also agreed to suspend trade with Spain.  However, there was no way to enforce this clause or any other terms of the treaty.  Settlers continued to make their way onto Cherokee land and Spanish traders infiltrated Cherokee territory, too. 

John Watts led a band of 1,000 Chickamauga and Muscogee warriors in attacks against American settlements.  The settlers, under Col. John Sevier, retaliated.  The two sides skirmished back and forth and tempers flared.  Near Knoxville Road on the French Broad River, Watts' force ambushed Cavett's Station.  The settlers there offered to surrender in return for promises of clemency, which Watts intended to allow them.  However, another Cherokee leader, named Doublehead, opposed Watt's lenient position and began killing prisoners despite the efforts of Watts and James Vann, whom we've already run across, to stop him.  This would deepen already hard feelings between Watts, Vann and Doublehead, which would fester later, but more on that.

Sevier learned of the attack and mustered his forces.  They caught up with a portion of Watts' force under a leader named Kingfisher in what is now Rome, Georgia and what was then near the Cherokee town of Etowah.  The Cherokee took up a defensive position on Myrtle Hill and tried to prevent Sevier from fording the Etowah River to attack.  Sevier forded the River further downstream and, when the Cherokee rushed to stop him, turned around and made straight for the village.  When Kingfisher was killed, Cherokee resistance collapsed.  Sevier's men rushed and burned the village of Etowah.  Nor was that all.  He burned several more Cherokee and Creek villages before heading back to Knoxville.

The war between the two sides would flare up again in 1794, as the frontier was never quiet.  The battle ground on Myrtle Hill is now a cemetery with a monument honoring Sevier's part in the battle, as he later became a governor of Tennessee.