Out of this settlement on the Watauga River grew the state of Tennessee.  A monument in honor of John Sevier stands in Nashville, a city founded by his friend Robertson.  Sevier became the first governor of the new state.

[Illustration:  THE SEVIER MONUMENT.]

160.  Summary.—­James Robertson, of North Carolina, and John Sevier, of Virginia, emigrated across the mountains to the western wilderness.  They settled on the Watauga River, and that settlement, with others made later, grew into the state of Tennessee, of which John Sevier became the first governor.

What friend did Boone have in North Carolina?  Tell about Governor Tryon.  What happened on the Alamance River?  Where did Robertson and others go?  Where did they settle?  Why did they like to be there?  Tell about John Sevier.  What did he and Robertson do?  What did Washington do for Robertson?  What state grew out of the Watauga settlement?  What did Sevier become?  Where is his monument?

GENERAL GEORGE ROGERS CLARK
(1752-1818).

161.  The British in the west; their forts; hiring Indians to fight the settlers.—­While Washington was fighting the battles of the Revolution in the east, the British in the west were not sitting still.  They had a number of forts in the Wilderness,[1] as that part of the country was then called.  One of these forts was at Detroit,[2] in what is now Michigan; another was at Vincennes,[3] in what is now Indiana; a third fort was at Kaskaskia,[4] in what is now Illinois.

[Illustration:  Map showing the Forts at Detroit, Kaskaskia, and Vincennes, with the line of Clark’s march.]

Colonel Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, was determined to drive the American settlers out of the west.  In the beginning of the Revolution the Americans resolved to hire the Indians to fight for them, but the British found that they could hire them better than we could, and so they got their help.  The savages did their work in a terribly cruel way.  Generally they did not come out and do battle openly, but they crept up secretly, by night, and attacked the farmers’ homes.  They killed and scalped the settlers in the west, burned their log cabins, and carried off the women and children prisoners.  The greater part of the people in England hated this sort of war.  They begged the king not to hire the Indians to do these horrible deeds of murder and destruction.  George the Third was not a bad-hearted man; but he was very set in his way, and he had fully made up his mind to conquer the “American rebels,” as he called them, even if he had to get the savages to help him do it.

[Footnote 1:  See map in paragraph 187.]

[Footnote 2:  Detroit (De-troit’):  for these forts see map in this paragraph.]

[Footnote 3:  Vincennes (Vin-senz’).]

[Footnote 4:  Kaskaskia (Kas-kas’ki-a).]