Although the Indian braves were eager for the scalps of the Watauga settlers, they failed to capture the fort and finally went away, just as they did from the neighboring settlements. For a while, but only for a while, the pioneers were left free from Indian ravages.
SEVIER A HERO AMONG THE TENNESSEE SETTLERS
In spite of the danger, however, daring men kept coming to join the pioneers at the Watauga settlements. Sevier continued to be a leading man in that backwoods region, and when, some years later, Robertson, as you remember, left Watauga to go to the Cumberland valley, Sevier became the most prominent man in the colony.
He was so prosperous that he could surround himself with much comfort. He built a rambling, one-story house on the Nolichucky Creek, a branch of the French Broad River. It was the largest in the settlement and was noted for the lavish entertainments given there, for Sevier was the same generous host as of old. His house consisted of two groups of rooms connected by a covered porch. Sevier with his family lived in one of the groups, and housed his guests in the other. There were large verandas and huge fireplaces, in which, during cold weather, cheerful wood-fires blazed.
A Barbecue of 1780.
Here to all, rich and poor alike, and especially to the men who had followed him in the many battles against the Indians, Sevier gave a hearty welcome. Rarely was his hospitable home without guests, and the table was heaped with such plain and wholesome food as woods and fields afforded.
It was Sevier’s delight at weddings or special merrymakings to feast all the backwoods people of the neighborhood at a barbecue, where an ox was roasted whole over the fire, and where, in fair weather, board tables were set under the trees. These were loaded with wild fowl, bear’s meat, venison, beef, johnny-cakes, ash-cakes, hominy, and applejack. Should you not like to have been one of the guests?
During one of these merrymaking feasts (1780) news was brought that Major Ferguson, one of the ablest officers in Cornwallis’s army, was threatening to make an attack on the back-country settlements. At once Sevier, along with Isaac Shelby and others, set out to raise an army of frontiersmen to march against Ferguson. Soon a thousand men were riding through the forests to find the British force, of which every man except the commander was an American Tory.
They came upon it in a strong position on King’s Mountain. Without delay the Americans made a furious attack. They fought with great heroism, charging up the steep mountainside with reckless bravery.