Volume 18 , Issue 27

The Wataugans Historical Drama

The Wataugans depicts the early history of the area that is now Northeast Tennessee. Who were they? Where did they settle?

The early settlers along the Holston and Watauga Rivers in modern East Tennessee found themselves outside the jurisdiction North Carolina and Virginia. In 1772, they form a government of their own, the Watauga Association, described by such historians as the first free and independent government (by men of European descent) on the American continent.

At that time, it was regarded by John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia, as an attempt to set up a "Separate Sate," which made it a dangerous example to other disaffected colonists.

It was in 1775, Judge Richard Henderson's Transylvania Purchase (buying most of modern Kentucky and Middle Tennessee from the cherokee Indians was opposed by the young warrior Dragging Canoe. he and his followers also opposed the purchase by the Watauga Association of the land they currently occupied. Most of the older chiefs, including Dragging Canoe's father, Atta-culla-culla, favored peace with the white settlers. The younger warriors attacked the settlements in the area, bringing the act to a climax with the 1776 attack on the reproduction of Fort Watauga (Fort Caswell) that had stood in the park since the 1970s. It was in the battle, John severe, who would later be the only governor of the Sate of Franklin and the first governor of the State of Tennessee, met his second wife, the high-spirited and athletic Catherine Sherrill, pulling her over the wall of the fort after her running leap made while fleeing from the Cherokees.

In 1780 a wedding of John sever and Bonnie Kate Sherrill was interrupted by a messenger with news of the war being fought against the British on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains. Major Patrick Ferguson, a British officer assigned to lead American Loyalist Militia in pacifying the rebellion in the west, had threatened to march over the mountains, hang the leaders, and lay waste to the country with fire and sword.

Local leaders attending the wedding agreed to muster the local militia on 25 September 1780, marcher the mountains to meet Ferguson before he could endanger their families. The ensuing march, culminating in the Battle of Kings Mountan, earned the participants the nickname "Overmountain Men," and their victory over the British was sometimes referred to as the turning point of the American Revolution in the South.

During the absence of the militia, the women of the settlement and the few remaining men (one out of 7 were drafted to stay behind) themselves from the Cherokee and British Indian agents.

The historical drama concluded with the return of the "Overmountain Men."
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