The records show
that he was reinstated as Brigadier General of the Western
Counties and also appointed at the head of the Committee on
Indian Affairs.
Not only in the region about Watauga did the pioneers of
Tennessee endure the throes of danger and strife during these
years. The little settlements on the Cumberland, which were
scattered over a short distance of about twenty-five or thirty
miles and had a frontier line of two hundred miles, were terribly
afflicted. Their nearest white neighbors among the Kentucky
settlers were one hundred and fifty miles away; and through the
cruelest years these could render no aid--could not, indeed, hold
their own stations. The Kentuckians, as we have seen, were
bottled up in Harrodsburg and Boonesborough; and, while the
northern Indians led by Girty and Dequindre darkened the Bloody
Ground anew, the Cumberlanders were making a desperate stand
against the Chickasaws and the Creeks. So terrible was their
situation that panic took hold on them, and they would have fled
but for the influence of Robertson. He may have put the question
to them in the biblical words, "Whither shall I flee?" For they
were surrounded, and those who did attempt to escape were
"weighed on the path and made light." Robertson knew that their
only chance of survival was to stand their ground.
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