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SKETCHES OF NORTH CAROLINA.

CHAPTER XXIII.
EMIGRATION TO TENNESSEE.

TENNESSEE is the daughter of North Carolina, having been in the chartered bounds of the colony, and also reckoned a part of the independent confederated State, until the year 1791, when she was reckoned one of the territories of the United States; and having received many of its earliest settlements and strongest reinforcements from the old North State, and from the original stock in Ireland and their descendants in the Middle States. The beautiful fields along the Holston and Clinch, and the charming valleys, allured the early emigrants by the same inducements as charmed and captivated the wanderers from Ireland and Pennsylvania, to fix their abodes between the Yadkin and the Catawba.

The phrases—"western counties"—"mountains"—"mountain men"—"Washington County," as used during the invasion of the Carolinas, by the King's forces, had reference to sections of country now in, or bordering upon the State of Tennessee. Ferguson was in pursuit of the soldiers of these regions, when he visited Rutherford county, and sent his insulting message; and on the Wataga, the forces began to assemble that gave him the fatal answer at King's Mountain.

The troubles and trials of the first settlement we can scarcely glance at, nor in the present connection is it necessary, they being in kind and circumstances altogether similar to those of the pioneers of the western part of the mother State, with this only exception, they were farther removed from market, and from the influence of royal authority either in church or state. The wide ranges for cattle and for game, were the first inducements to settle on the Holston; and the time of the first cabin and the name of the pioneer will probably never be known. Next to this influence, was the policy of giving bounty for military service, in wild lands; and Carolina gave a value to the forests of her western wilds by rewarding the labors and exposure of her sons, with titles to lands, that might become a home to them or their descendants. So rapid was the influx of enterprising men, particularly about the close of the Revolutionary war, that an effort was made in the years