268 The Winning of the West 



and also in direct communication with North Car- 

 olina, to which State they belonged. It was not 

 until 1779 that a portion of these Holston people 

 moved to the bend of the Cumberland River and 

 started a new community, exactly as Kentucky had 

 been started before. At first this new community, 

 known as the Cumberland settlement, was connected 

 by only the loosest tie with the Holston settlements. 

 The people of the two places were not grouped 

 together; they did not even have a common name. 

 The three clusters of Holston, Cumberland, and 

 Kentucky settlements developed independently of 

 one another, and though their founders were in 

 each case of the same kind, they were at first only 

 knit one to another by a lax bond of comradeship. 

 In 1776 the Watauga pioneers probably num- 

 bered some six hundred souls in all. Having at 

 last found out the State in which they lived, they 

 petitioned North Carolina to be annexed thereto 

 as a district or county. The older settlements had 

 evidently been jealous of them, for they found it 

 necessary to deny that they were, as had been as- 

 serted, "a lawless mob"; it may be remarked that 

 the Transylvanian colonists had been obliged to 

 come out with a similar statement. In their peti- 

 tion they christened their country "Washington 

 District," in honor of the great chief whose name 

 already stood first in the hearts of all Americans. 

 The document was written by Sevier. It set forth 

 the history of the settlers, their land purchases from 

 the Indians, their successful effort at self-govern- 



