History of Tennessee Author:James Phelan Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE FOUNDING OF THE HOUSEHOLD. In 1769 the waves poured over the mountains which ,. had so long stemmed their tide, and carried with them the ... more » germs of a new dynasty of people among the republics ', . of the earth. In 1709 we meet with William Bean's cabin aud the beginnings of the Watauga Association. The first small beginnings of the Watauga settlement were made at a time ]eculiarly fortunate. The Indian warfare, which made Tennessee as dark and bloody a ground as Kentucky itself, had exterminated nearly all j of the Indian race in the neighborhood of the Watanga. The Sliawnets existed only in small, wandering detachments, and were, for the most part, hidden away in the lofty recesses of. the Cumberland mountains. " The Creeks of the Cumberland region had been massacred, almost to a man, by the Cherokees. These, emboldened by continued success, had made an incursion into-the country of the Chickasaws and had been repulsed with terrible slaughter. The Chickasaws, indeed, were kindly disposed, but were too far away either to injure or assist the infant settlement. For the time being, and until the Cherokees had recuperated sufficiently to make war upon the new race, the chief danger arose from bands of roving Indians. The great thoroughfare of Indian travel was along the range and through the valleys of tlie Cumberland and the Appalachian mountains. The stream of emigration having once begun, it kept on with the force of the incoming tide, each wave rising higher, rushing farther, and spreading broader than the one preceding it. A party of explorers in 1769 noticed, on their return along the banks of the llulstoii, that there was a cabin on every desirable site they passed, where only six weeks previous no sign of human habitation had been visible. Captai...« less