Besides the Scotch-Irish, there were many Germans who had followed the valley from Pennsylvania, and there were Huguenots also, besides a few Hollanders and Swedes. A fort was built on the little river, and around this defense grew up the Watauga Settlement. There was no Tennessee in those days. Many of the settlers had followed down the valleys from earlier homes in Virginia, and it never occurred to them that they were not still living in Virginia, and able to call on the colony for help. But after a time a man came to the settlement who was a surveyor, and for some reason he thought that he would run the boundary line of Virginia farther west. When he had done it, what was the surprise of every one to find that they were not in Virginia at all! If they belonged to any colony, it was to North Carolina. Unfortunately there was a lack of good government in that colony, and the prospect of belonging to it was not a pleasant one; indeed, some of the settlers had run away from North Carolina, and had felt safer because the great mountains rose between them and their former home. There seemed nothing to do but to make a government of their own, so they formed the Watauga Association, about which writers of American history have said a good deal. It would be interesting to see a copy of the constitution that was drawn up by these backwoodsmen, but it has been lost, with little hope that it will ever be recovered. It is known, however, that there was a committee of thirteen, really a legislature. This committee chose five of their own number to form a court, which had a clerk and a sheriff and made laws for all the settlers. Roosevelt, in his _Winning of the West_, says that these pioneers were the first to build a “free and independent community” in America. The two most important men of this little state in the wild forest show us that the settlers came from widely different places. James Robertson was one, and he came over the mountains from North Carolina. John Sevier was the other, and he came down the valley from Virginia. We shall need to know what sort of men these were. James Robertson belonged to the Scotch-Irish people. He was not one of the very first settlers at Watauga, but came in the second year, 1770. He had no early education, and his wife, an intelligent woman, taught him to read. He went alone over the mountains, with only his horse and gun, in search of a place for a home. He found the settlers and admired the place which they had chosen, but on his way back in the fall he lost his horse and got his powder wet. He wandered about, almost starved, until he met some hunters, who helped him home. He told his neighbors of the lands in the valley, and as soon as the winter was over his own family and sixteen others started out for Watauga. He built a log house, went to work on the land, and by his wisdom and energy soon came to be a leader of the new colony.