First came the Roanoke settlement in 1585 (which was abandoned) and a second attempt in 1586 (which also soon failed). Then the Virginia Company² of London was established by the English Crown (James I) in 1606, and James Town (Jamestown) was founded in 1607. After a period of dreadful diseases, serious white/Indian relationship problems, and deadly Indian wars, the tiny population of James Town grew, and more land was needed for new arrivals.

They found neither hoards of gold nor a quick passage to the south seas, however they soon found that the real gold was the land itself and the tobacco that could be grown upon it.³ The only obstacle that stood in their way was the Indian (Aboriginal) claims to the land.

Treaties (really purchases or forced sales) were the instruments used to obtain the lands from the Indians, often these treaties occurred after a war with the Indians. Often too, the wars were started when illegal settlements were made on Indian land. The treaties were used as the legal justification to seize the land.

As the population grew,⁴ there started a migration to the south and in 1653, the first settlers from Virginia occupied a section of land north of Albemarle Sound (now in North Carolina). The King’s Charter for Carolina was issued in 1665, with Carolina being split into North and South in 1723.

By the 1750s, white settlement had entered south-west Virginia, and North Carolina’s “western lands” (Tennessee⁵) were just a step away. It was the Virginians who took that first step,⁶ yet it is North Carolina who maintained the land records.

Later, the treaties appear, and slowly, Indian land was consumed; the land speculators, along with the vast number of settlers guaranteed it. The last Tennessee treaties of the 1830s required Tennessee’s First People to remove out of the state, and on to the country west of the Mississippi River.1.  

In 1542, Andrew Borde published his Introduction of Knowledge and Dyetary of Helth. In his book, he advocates the curative value of spices. Nutmeg was thought to cure everything from the plague to the “blody flux.” Cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, saffron, pepper, and more, were in great demand in England. In 1553, the first English expedition of the Mystery, Company and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Unknown Lands,  sailed off to the Spice Islands only come to grief in the ice-bound waters of the Arctic. In 1600 the East India Company  was founded by Royal Charter during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Potentially, there was great profit in spices, some say as much as 60,000%. Unfortunately for the English merchant adventurers, it was a long arduous, often deadly voyage to the Spice Islands. Portugal and Spain were already involved in the trade and controlled ports along the shipping routes.

What England needed was a safer, shorter, faster route to the Spice Islands, a route that avoided the Portuguese and Spanish. In time, it became a hope that there would be a short route through the Colony of Virginia to the Pacific Ocean. In 1716, Virginia’s Governor Spotswood and his The Knights of the Golden Horseshoe had gotten as far as western Virginia where they discovered the Shenandoah Valley. No safe, short, fast route from Virginia to the Spice Islands was ever found.2.  

“Treasurer and Company of Adventurers of the City of London for the First Colony of Virginia” (Second Charter, 23 May 1609)3.  In 1612, John Rolfe plants a tobacco crop in order to save a struggling James Town. In 1614, he ships the crop to England. From this humble beginning, the south’s tobacco production grew to immense proportions; and so did the need for land on which to grow tobacco.

There also grew the need for labor to raise the crops. From John Rolfe’s Diary: About the last of August came in a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negars. So from this humble beginning, we see too that slavery grew to immense proportions. Of course, it was more than the Africans who were forced into slavery. Indians were enslaved too, and that caused great harm to their diminishing populations.4.  

It is estimated that at time of the establishment of James Town, the Indian population of America was about 1,000,000. However, imported European and African diseases, warfare, and enslavement had drastic and negative effects on the Indian population. By 1690 the American population had risen to a 250,000. From then on, it doubled every 25 years until, in 1775, it numbered more than 2,500,000.

The year 2000 United States Census reports that the population of the United States was 281,421,906 with only 0.9% (2,532,797) of that number being American Indian and Alaska Native persons.

5.   The name Tennessee originates with the Indian (perhaps Cherokee) name Tenase, or as the Spanish recorded it, Tanasqui. It appears as the name of the river, Tenase, (also called the Cherokee River) and the later Anglicized form; “Tennessee” River. In 1788 it appeared in North Carolina’s western lands as Tennessee County. In 1796 that county relinquished the name so it could become the name of the new state.

6.  It is believed that the first settler to the Wataugah area was Captain William Bean, who settled on Boon’s Creek in 1769.
F.S.