Robertson meanwhile was delegated by the unanimous vote of the settlers to go to the Assembly of North Carolina, and there petition for the establishment of a regular land office at Nashborough, and in other ways advance the interests of the settlers.  He was completely successful in his mission.  The Cumberland settlements were included in a new county, called Davidson [Footnote:  In honor of General Wm. Davidson, a very gallant and patriotic soldier of North Carolina during the Revolutionary war.  The county government was established in October, 1783.]; and an Inferior Court of Pleas and Common Sessions, vested by the act with extraordinary powers, was established at Nashborough.  The four justices of the new court had all been Triers of the old committee, and the scheme of government was practically not very greatly changed, although now resting on an indisputably legal basis.  The Cumberland settlers had for years acted as an independent, law-abiding, and orderly commonwealth, and the Court of Triers had shown great firmness and wisdom.  It spoke well for the people that they had been able to establish such a government, in which the majority ruled, while the rights of each individual were secured.  Robertson deserves the chief credit as both civil and military leader.  The committee of which he was a member, had seen that justice was done between man and man, had provided for defense against the outside foe, and had striven to prevent any wrongs being done to neutral or allied powers.  When they became magistrates of a county of North Carolina they continued to act on the lines they had already marked out.  The increase of population had brought an increase of wealth.  The settlers were still frontiersmen, clad in buckskin or homespun, with rawhide moccasins, living in log-cabins, and sleeping under bearskins on beds made of buffalo hides; but as soon as they ventured to live on their clearings the ground was better tilled, corn became abundant, and cattle and hogs increased as the game diminished.  Nashborough began to look more like an ordinary little border town. [Footnote:  The justices built a court-house and jail of hewed logs, the former eighteen feet square, with a lean-to or shed of twelve feet on one side.  The contracts for building were let out at vendue to the lowest bidder.]

    Correspondence with the Spaniards.

During this year Robertson carried on some correspondence with the Spanish governor at New Orleans, Don Estevan Miro.  This was the beginning of intercourse between the western settlers and the Spanish officers, an intercourse which was absolutely necessary, though it afterwards led to many intrigues and complications.  Robertson was obliged to write to Miro not only to disclaim responsibility for the piratical deeds of men like Colbert, but also to protest against the conduct of certain of the Spanish agents among the Creeks and Chickamaugas.  No sooner had hostilities ceased with the British than the Spaniards began to incite the savages to take up once more the hatchet they had just dropped, [Footnote:  Calendar of Va.  State Papers, III., 584, 608, etc.] for Spain already recognized in the restless borderers possible and formidable foes.