In violation of both the British Proclamation and existing treaties between colonial governments and the Cherokee, settlers in northeastern Tennessee bound themselves together into the extralegal Watauga Association (17721778) and crafted their own land agreements with factions of Cherokee leaders. Cologne/Bonn Map During the Country Revolution, when Tennessee settlers felt exposed to the British and their Cherokee allies, Watauga settlers sought annexation from either North Carolina or Virginia, and, in 1777, became Washington County, North Carolina. The move for local self-governance remained dormant for only a short time.
When North Carolina was slow to cede its western lands to the newly formed United States, local settlers designated themselves the State of Franklin in 1784 and petitioned for admission as the fourteenth state in the Union. Rebuffed, they disbanded and returned to North Carolina, becoming the federal Territory Southwest of the River Ohio in 1790 and achieving statehood as Tennessee in 1796. Charles A. Israel See also: Appalachia; Exploration. Bibliography Aron, Stephen Anthony.
How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Faragher, John Mack. Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an Country Pioneer. New York: Henry Holt, 1992. Finger, John R. Tennessee Frontiers: Three Regions in Transition. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001. Satz, Ronald N. Tennessee’s Indian Peoples: From White Contact to Removal, 15401840. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1979.
