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"A dangerous example to the people of America"
(Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, 1774)
"mongrels" and barbarians"
(Colonel Patrick Ferguson, 1780)
"Fugitives from justice" and "off-scourings of the earth"
(A North Carolina Legislator, 1784)
The charges were not without foundations. The Watauga and Nolichucky valleys, beyond the legal jurisdiction of Virginia and beyond the effective jurisdiction of North Carolina, were havens in the 1770's for fugitives from the justice from teh Virginia nother and the North Carolina east.
The Wataugans were self-conscious about this. In their 1776 petition for annexation to North Carolina, they said:
We therefore trust that we shall be considered as we deserve, and not, as we have (no doubt) been many times represented, as a lawless mob. It is for this very reason that we petition; we now again repeat it, that it is for want of proper authority to try and punish felons, we can only mention to you murderers, horse theives and robbers, and we are sorry to say that some of them have escaped us for want of proper authority.
Others have described the Wataugans as being fearless, independent, self-reliant -- thought admittedly aggressive and ruthless and occasionally willing to take the law into their own hands. One of the more favorable views of the Wataugans was that of William Tatham, a young Englishman who was employed at John Carter's store on the Watauga and who was in 1776 clerk pro tem for the Watauga Association. Tatham eventually returned to Endland and in after years wrote of his former neighbors to the west.
In thirty years knowledge I have witnessed an almost universal open door to the stranger, the needy and the man of frank and inoffensive demeanor.......I went among them a stranger adn they took me in.......I was nameless and they gave me common shelter; I was bewildered in teh forest; they conducted my footsteps. I believe the great bulk of the inhabitants to be among the most useful and orderly citizens belonging to the American States,
