ish, generous hospitality, as to the skill
and dashing prowess which made him the most renowned Indian fighter of
the Southwest. He had an eager, impetuous nature, and was very
ambitious, being almost as fond of popularity as of Indian-fighting.[22]
He was already married, and the father of two children, when he came to
the Watauga, and, like Robertson, was seeking a new and better home for
his family in the west. So far, his life had been as uneventful as that
of any other spirited young borderer; his business had been that of a
frontier Indian trader; he had taken part in one or two unimportant
Indian skirmishes.[23] Later he was commissioned by Lord Dunmore as a
captain in the Virginia line.

Such were Sevier and Robertson, the leaders in the little frontier
outpost of civilization that was struggling to maintain itself on the
Watauga; and these two men afterwards proved themselves to be, with the
exception of George Rogers Clark, the greatest of the first generation
of Trans-Alleghany pioneers.

Their followers were worthy of them. All alike were keenly alive to the
disadvantages of living in a community where there was neither law nor
officer to enforce it. Accordingly, with their characteristic capacity
for combination, so striking as existing together with the equally
characteristic capacity for individual self-help, the settlers
determined to organize a government of their own. They promptly put
their resolution into effect early in the spring of 1772, Robertson
being apparently the leader in the movement.

They decided to adopt written articles of agreement, by which their
conduct should be governed; and these were known as the Articles of the
Watauga Association. They formed a written constitution, the first ever
adopted west of the mountains, or by a community composed of
American-born freemen. It is this fact of the early independence and
self-government of the settlers along the head-waters of the Tennessee
that gives to their history its peculiar importance. They were the first
men of American birth to establish a free and independent community on
the continent. Even before this date, there had been straggling
settlements of Pennsylvanians and Virginians along the head-waters of
the Ohio; but these settlements remained mere parts of the colonies
behind them, and neither grew into a separate community, nor played a
distinctive part in the growth of the west.

The first step taken by the Watauga settlers