Signing of the Watauga Association Compact

Background. Settlement west of the colonial boundaries violated the Royal Proclamation of 1763, and the Watauga and Nolichucky settlers were ordered to leave. They believed the valleys had been ceded to Virginia by the Cherokee in the 1770 Treaty of Lochaber, but Colonel John Donelson's survey showed the lands remained Cherokee domain. Many had come from Virginia via the Great Valley, and some were reportedly Regulators who withdrew from North Carolina after the Battle of Alamance in 1771.

The Compact. In May 1772 the settlers negotiated a ten-year lease directly with the Cherokee and, being outside the claims of any colony, established the Watauga Association to provide basic government functions. Settlers along the Watauga, Doe, Holston, and Nolichucky rivers met at Sycamore Shoals to create this independent regional government.

Legal Status and Legacy. No copy of the compact, known as the Articles of the Watauga Association, has ever been found; related documents imply the settlers still considered themselves British subjects. In 1774 Virginia's governor Lord Dunmore called the Association a "dangerous example" of government independent of royal authority. Theodore Roosevelt later wrote that the settlers were the "first men of American birth to establish a free and independent community on the continent."

Aftermath. North Carolina annexed the settlement area, by then the Washington District, in November 1776. Though short-lived, the Association provided a basis for what became Tennessee and likely influenced other trans-Appalachian frontier governments, such as the 1785 Clarksville Compact.