In a sense, then,
King's Mountain was the pivot of the war's revolving stage, which
swung the British from their succession of victories towards the
surrender at Yorktown.
Shelby, Campbell, and Cleveland escorted the prisoners to
Virginia. Sevier, with his men, rode home to Watauga. When the
prisoners had been delivered to the authorities in Virginia, the
Holston men also turned homeward through the hills. Their route
lay down through the Clinch and Holston valleys to the settlement
at the base of the mountains. Sevier and his Wataugans had gone
by Gillespie's Gap, over the pathway that hung like a narrow
ribbon about the breast of Roan Mountain, lifting its crest in
dignified isolation sixty-three hundred feet above the levels.
The "Unakas" was the name the Cherokees had given to those white
men who first invaded their hills; and the Unakas is the name
that white men at last gave to the mountain.
Great companies of men were to come over the mountain paths on
their way to the Mississippi country and beyond; and with them,
as we know, were to go many of these mountain men, to pass away
with their customs in the transformations that come with
progress. But there were others who clung to these hills. They
were of several stocks--English, Scotch, Highlanders, Ulstermen,
who mingled by marriage and sometimes took their mates from among
the handsome maids of the Cherokees.
Pages:
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220