At first the hardy pioneers found lodgment on the Watauga, Holston,
Nolichucky, and other streams to the east of modern Knoxville. But in
1779 a colony was planted by James Robertson and John Donelson on the
banks of the Cumberland, two hundred miles farther west, and in a
brief time the remoter settlement, known as Nashville, became a Mecca
for homeseeking Carolinians and Virginians. The intervening hill and
forest country abounded in hostile Indians. The settler or trader who
undertook to traverse this region took his life in his hands, and the
settlements themselves were subject to perennial attack.

In 1788, after the collapse of an attempt of the people of the
"Western District" to set up an independent State by the name of
Franklin, the North Carolina Assembly erected the three counties
included in the Cumberland settlement into a superior court district;
and the person selected for judge was a close friend of Jackson, John
McNairy, who also had been a law pupil of Spruce Macay in Salisbury.
McNairy had been in the Tennessee region two years, but at the time of
receiving his judicial appointment he was visiting friends in the
Carolinas. His description of the opportunities awaiting ambitious
young men in the back country influenced a half-dozen acquaintances,
lawyers and others, to make the return trip with him; and among the
number was Jackson. Some went to assume posts which were at McNairy's
disposal, but Jackson went only to see the country.

Assembling at Morganton, on the east side of the mountains, in the
fall of 1788, the party proceeded leisurely to Jonesboro, which,
although as yet only a village of fifty or sixty log houses, was the
metropolis of the eastern Tennessee settlements. There the party was
obliged to wait for a sufficient band of immigrants to assemble before
they could be led by an armed guard with some degree of safety through