which he was still occupying when Fort Loudon fell in 1760. Fort Robinson was rebuilt in 1776 under the name of Fort Patrick Henry; from which in 1779, Colonel John Donelson embarked on his perilous voyage down the Tennessee and up the Ohio and Cumberland Rivers to Nashville, freighted with the mothers of Middle Tennessee. The first pitched battle with the Cherokees in 1776, was fought at Long Island Flats; and there the Virginia and North Carolina forces under Colonel William Christian, assembled for their first expedition against the Overhill towns. Long Island was a favorite treaty ground of the Cherokees; there they held their first treaty with the States of Virginia and North Carolina in 1777, and their second in 1781. On account of its sanctity as a treaty ground the legislature of North Carolina excluded it from the operation of the act of 1783 which assumed to appropriate the Indian lands by right of conquest; and the Cherokees continued to hold it until 1806.
There is a curious reservation in the treaty of 1777. The provision is in these words:
“Memorandum before signing: That the Tassel yesterday objected against giving up the Great Island, opposite Fort Henry, to any person or country, except Colonel Nathaniel Gist. for whom and themselves it was reserved by the Cherokees.
“The Raven did the same this day in behalf of the Indians, and desired that Colonel Gist might sit down upon it when he pleased, as it belonged to him and them to hold good talks on.”15
There is an interesting romance leading up to this extraordinary expression of friendship for Colonel Gist, the details of which are now lost; but we still have a few fragmentary facts that sufficiently indicate its character. After Colonel Gist returned from the West he abandoned himself to the life of a hunter and explorer. He was the companion and friend of Daniel Boone. They visited the Holston together in 1760; hunted down its south, or main fork; camped at Wolf Hills, where Abingdon, Va., now stands. Here they disagreed and separated, Boone taking the Indian trail leading to Long Island, and Gist following the trail leading to Cumberland Gap.16 It was on this excursion into East Tennessee that Boone carved on a tree the oft quoted inscription: “D. Boon cilled a bar on this tree in the year 1760”; which I would not again repeat except that it fixes a date important to my story.
Though Gist did not follow Boone to Long Island, he had already seen it and been attracted by its desirable location. It was the most conspicuous point on the Tennessee side of the mountains. As early as 1757 Richard Paris, an Indian trader located on the Holston River, addressed a letter to the Governor of Virginia requesting a grant of the land on Long Island. Instead of going directly to Long Island, Gist continued his journey southwardly until be reached the Cherokee towns on the Little Tennessee River. This appears to me to have been about the time the father of Sequoya must have been at Tuskegee, where his mother lived; and so friendly were Gist’s relations with the Indians that they sold him the Long Island of Holston within a year. In his petition to the legislature of Virginia asking them to confirm his Indian title to the same he represents that he obtained it in 1761. This is the origin of his claim to Long Island which called forth the remarkable reservation in the treaty of 1777, to which attention has been drawn.
Gist spent much of his time in the Cherokee Nation for the next sixteen years. He lived with them on terms of the greatest intimacy. He was so much in their confidence at the time of the Cherokee invasion of 1776, that his loyalty to his country was questioned. On July 8, of that year, Jarret Williams informed the Watauga settlers that Alexander Cameron,
a British Indian agent, had determined to send Captain Nathaniel Gist, William Faulen, and Isaac and Jarret Williams with the invading forces for the purpose of finding out and leading over to the Indians any king’s men among the inhabitants.17 Such ready credence was given to Williams’ information that the 