Seldom has a little girl of eleven years shared in so perilous an adventure.  The party started in the depth of a severe Winter, and battled for two months with the ice before it had fairly begun the descent of the Tennessee.  But, in the Spring, accompanied by a considerable fleet of boats, the craft occupied by John Donelson and his family floated down the winding stream more rapidly.  Many misfortunes befell them.  Sometimes a boat would get aground and remain immovable till its whole cargo was landed.  Sometimes a boat was dashed against a projecting point and sunk.  One man died of his frozen feet; two children were born.  On board one boat, containing twenty-eight persons, the small-pox raged.  As this boat always sailed at a certain distance behind the rest, it was attacked by Indians, who captured it, killed all the men, and carried off the women and children.  The Indians caught the small-pox, of which some hundreds died in the course of the season.

But during this voyage, which lasted several months, no misfortune befell the boat of Colonel Donelson; and he and his family, including his daughter Rachel, arrived safely at the site of the present city of Nashville, near which he selected his land, built his log house, and established himself.  Never has a settlement been so infested by hostile Indians as this.  When Rachel Donelson, with her sisters and young friends, went blackberrying, a guard of young men, with their rifles loaded and cocked, stood guard over the surrounding thickets while the girls picked the fruit.  It was not safe for a man to stoop over a spring to drink unless some one else was on the watch with his rifle in his arms; and when half a dozen men stood together, in conversation, they turned their backs to each other, all facing different ways, to watch for a lurking savage.

So the Donelsons lived for eight years, and gathered about them more negroes, more cattle, and more horses than any other household in the settlement.  During one of the long Winters, when a great tide of emigration had reduced the stock of corn, and threatened the neighborhood with famine, Colonel Donelson moved to Kentucky with all his family and dependents, and there lived until the corn crop at Nashville was gathered.  Rachel, by this time, had grown to be a beautiful and vigorous young lady, well skilled in all the arts of the backwoods, and a remarkably bold and graceful rider.  She was a plump little damsel, with the blackest hair and eyes, and of a very cheerful and friendly disposition.  During the temporary residence of her father in Kentucky, she gave her hand and heart to one Lewis Robards, and her father returned to Nashville without her.

Colonel Donelson soon after, while in the woods surveying far from his home, fell by the hand of an assassin.  He was found pierced by bullets; but whether they were fired by red savages or by white was never known.  To comfort her mother in her loneliness, Rachel and her husband came to Nashville and lived with her, intending, as soon as the Indians were subdued, to occupy a farm of their own.