384 The Winning of the West 



dians. 30 Small parties of scouts were incessantly 

 employed in patrolling the southern border. 



Nevertheless, all pressing danger from the In- 

 dians was over. The Holston settlements throve 

 lustily. Wagon roads were made, leading into both 

 Virginia and North Carolina. Settlers thronged 

 into the country, the roads were well traveled, and 

 the clearings became very numerous. The villages 

 began to feel safe without stockades, save those on 

 the extreme border, which were still built in the 

 usual frontier style. The scattering log school- 

 houses and meeting-houses increased steadily in 

 numbers, and in 1783, Methodism, destined to be- 

 come the leading and typical creed of the West, 

 first gained a foothold along the Holston, with a 

 congregation of seventy-six members. 31 



These people of the upper Tennessee valleys long 

 continued one in interest as in blood. Whether 

 they lived north or south of the Virginia or North 

 Carolina boundary, they were more closely united to 

 one another than they were to the seaboard gov- 

 ernments of which they formed part. Their his- 

 tory is not generally studied as a whole, because one 

 portion of their territory continued part of Vir- 

 ginia, while the remainder was cut off from North 

 Carolina as the nucleus of a separate State. But 

 in the time of their importance, in the first forma- 

 tive period of the young West, all these Holston 



30 Do., p. 560. 



31 "History of Methodism in Tennessee," John B. M'Ferrin 

 (Nashville, 1873), I, 26. 



