Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 2.djvu/349

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VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

raised crops for four years, unmolested by the surrounding Indians. They believed themselves to be within the limits of Vir- ginia, but when the lines were run in 1772, ir was found that they were on land belong- ing to the Cherokees. They made a lease with the Indians, but in the merry-making which followed, a warrior was killed by one of the whites, and trouble was only avoided by Robertson's efforts, and Indians and whites remained at peace until 1776. In July, of that year, the Indians attacked the fort, and were beaten off by Robert- son and Sevier, with forty men, after twenty days' fighting. In the spring of 1779. Robertson explored the Cumberland valley, to which he emigrated with a party, leaving Sevier at Watauga. One of his par- ties made a settlement at what became Nashville, Tennessee, where Robertson's other people joined them. They were soon attacked by the Cherokees, and in a few months had lost sixty-seven of their two hundred and fifty-six men. Their crops were swept away by a flood, and they faced star- vation, and many of the settlers went back east, reducing the settlement to one hundred and thirty-four persons, while most of those who remained, urged Robertson to leave also. This he refused, saying, **Here I shall stay, if every man of you deserts me." With his eldest son. Isaac Bledsoe, and a negro, be made his way to Boone, in Kentucky, from whence he procured ammunition, and returned to Nashville. He successfully re- sisted an attack by one thousand Indians in April. 1781. After the revolutionary war. he made friends with the Choctaws and Chickasaws, drawing them away from their connection with the British, and also made peace with the Cherokees. Later, the half-

breed Creek chief. Alexander McGillwray, made a treaty with the Spanish governor of Louisiana, under which he was to drive out the .\mericans. and he warred upon them at intervals for a period of twelve years. Robertson frequently rejected overtures from the Spanish governor, who offered him peace and free navigation on the Mississippi, if he would establish Watauga and Ken- tucky as a government separate from the Union. In 1790 Washington made him brigadier-general, and his militar\' services continued six years longer. He shared with Sevier the honor and affection of the Ten- ncsseeans. He was made Indian commis- sioner, and held that office until his death. Mis wife, Charlotte Reeves, born in Vir- ginia, accompanied him to Watauga on its first settlement, and participated in all his dangers, at times using the rifle against the indians, with unerring skill. He died m the Chickasaw country. Tennessee. September I, 1814.

Todd, John, born in Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, in 1750. He took part in the tattle of Point Pleasant. Virginia, in 1774, as adjutant-general to Gen. Andrew Lewis. He settled as a lawyer in Fincastle, Vir- ginia, in 1775, with his brothers, he emigrated to Kentucky, and took part in the organiza- tion of the Transylvania colonial legislature, with Daniel Boone, and made an expedition southwest as far as Bowling Green, Ken- tucky. He settled near Lexington in 1776, and was elected a burgess to the Virginia legislature, being one of the first two repre- sentatives from Kentucky county, where he .«erved as county lieutenant and colonel of militia. He accompanied Gen. George Rogers Clark to \'incennes and Kaskaskia,

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