the handsomest in Tennessee.  He was tall, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, brown-haired, of slender build, with erect, military carriage and commanding bearing, his lithe, finely proportioned figure being well set off by the hunting-shirt which he almost invariably wore.  From his French forefathers he inherited a gay, pleasure-loving temperament, that made him the most charming of companions.  His manners were polished and easy, and he had great natural dignity.  Over the backwoodsmen he exercised an almost unbounded influence, due as much to his ready tact, invariable courtesy, and lavish, generous hospitality, as to the skill and dashing prowess which made him the most renowned Indian fighter of the Southwest.  He had an eager, impetuous nature, and was very ambitious, being almost as fond of popularity as of Indian-fighting.[22] He was already married, and the father of two children, when he came to the Watauga, and, like Robertson, was seeking a new and better home for his family in the west.  So far, his life had been as uneventful as that of any other spirited young borderer; his business had been that of a frontier Indian trader; he had taken part in one or two unimportant Indian skirmishes.[23] Later he was commissioned by Lord Dunmore as a captain in the Virginia line.

Such were Sevier and Robertson, the leaders in the little frontier outpost of civilization that was struggling to maintain itself on the Watauga; and these two men afterwards proved themselves to be, with the exception of George Rogers Clark, the greatest of the first generation of Trans-Alleghany pioneers.

Their followers were worthy of them.  All alike were keenly alive to the disadvantages of living in a community where there was neither law nor officer to enforce it.  Accordingly, with their characteristic capacity for combination, so striking as existing together with the equally characteristic capacity for individual self-help, the settlers determined to organize a government of their own.  They promptly put their resolution into effect early in the spring of 1772, Robertson being apparently the leader in the movement.

They decided to adopt written articles of agreement, by which their conduct should be governed; and these were known as the Articles of the Watauga Association.  They formed a written constitution, the first ever adopted west of the mountains, or by a community composed of American-born freemen.  It is this fact of the early independence and self-government of the settlers along the head-waters of the Tennessee that gives to their history its peculiar importance.  They were the first men of American birth to establish a free and independent community on the continent.  Even before this date, there had been straggling settlements of Pennsylvanians and Virginians along the head-waters of the Ohio; but these settlements remained mere parts of the colonies behind them, and neither grew into a separate community, nor played a distinctive part in the growth of the west.