Here's Watauga's history and finished map. It's both longer and sooner than I expected - once I started to graft the State of Franklin's history onto the ASB, it was hard to stop. There's still no flag, but to make up for it, this is the first proper state map in a good long while.
Watauga is a small English-speaking state perched in the Allegheny mountains and along the rivers that flow down to the west. Originally a breakaway piece of Carolina, Watauga won and kept its independence by fighting fiercely for it; in this way its history can be compared to its fellow inland settler states of Vermont and Upper Connecticut. But while it began as an aggressive spearhead of English civilization, Wataugan culture has also been influenced very much by its Cherokee neighbors. As a small, poor state, it has sometimes struggled to find its voice in the halls of power, but its people remain proud to call themselves its citizens.
History
Founding the Watauga settlements (1760-1770)
The main route between Upper and Lower Virginia passes through northern Watauga, so the first English to come into the area were Virginian hunters and trappers going to the Ohio valley. By the 1760s many Virginian and Carolian people were looking to plant settlements west of the mountains. This violated England's treaties with the Cherokee, so the people who moved in tended to be tough, self-sufficient types with a low opinion of the monarchy and the law. Late in the decade, some of the settlers along the Watauga River formed an association to govern their own affairs and negotiate with local Cherokee leaders. While it did not yet declare itself a state, the Watauga Association marks the start of what today is the State of Watauga.
The founders of Watauga at first were coy on the question of staying loyal to England. But as the 1760s stretched into the 70s, this neutrality became impossible to keep up. Virginia had declared independence and Carolina confirmed its loyalty. All along the backcountry, republicans and loyalists fought bitterly in what had grown into a bloody civil war. The Wataugan settlers by and large sympathized with the republicans. Citizens invited republican refugees to come to the territory, knowing they would need the manpower if the war should come west. Wataugans also sought to make inroads among disaffected members of the Catawba tribe. The Catawbas were mostly firm allies of England, but a few young and ambitious members were enticed by the offer: full rights as citizens rather than a protected status as wards of the Crown.
The Wars of Independence (1770-1785)
John Sevier now became the leader of the movement for independence. Sevier was a landowner who came to Watauga shortly after the Association was organized and soon won election as a magistrate. In the early 1770s he raised a unit of men to join Virginia's fight against England and Carolina. At his urging, the assembly finally declared independence and soon after named him governor of the now-state. Military matters occupied most of Sevier's long tenure as governor. Typical of the rough, violent leaders who rose to prominence during this era, he not only attacked Carolian troops, but led raids on the homes of prominent loyalists closer to home, as well as Cherokee villages to the west.
Sevier's administration also made diplomatic gains. Despite having served under Virginian command in the army, he resisted all attempts by Virginia to exert control over his new state. Sevier had fortifications built where the road between the Virginias crossed Wataugan territory, thereby to discourage his ally from trying to annex the territory. These forts eventually became the city of Freeport.
Meanwhile, Watauga took advantage of disunity among the Cherokee. Judge James White went as an envoy to the Cherokee towns along the Little Tanasi River, closest to the Watauga settlements. The community there had historically been dominant within the nation but had recently been eclipsed by others; and its chiefs were weary of the long war against England's enemies. White managed to win a separate peace treaty with the chiefs there, drawing a border near the Little Tanasi but not encroaching on the main towns. In exchange, Watauga made the same offer that it had made the Catawba: in return for living in Watauga, obeying its laws and serving on the militia, Cherokee people could live as citizens with full civil rights. Virginia was also seeking Cherokee immigrants to help settle its western territory - the so-called "Virginia Cherokee" who today mostly live in Ohio - but Virginia's concessions to the Indians did not go nearly as far as Watauga's. In this way a state founded by violent Indian fighters adopted the most enlightened indigenous policy of all the English-speaking states.
The Tanasi Treaty concluded right as Wataugans were meeting to draft a constitution. The state did not yet have a proper one, only a set of ad hoc agreements that sitting leaders had made without submitting them to a vote of the people. In their convention at the Nolichucky County courthouse, delegates considered some quite radical proposals for a new democratic charter. Many of these ideas found their way into the constitution, mostly in weakened form. All men were granted the vote regardless of property, but the governor and highest officials still needed to own land. Lawyers and others with education were thankfully not prohibited from serving in government, but religious ministers still were, a secularist provision that remains in effect today. Governor Sevier, a major landowner himself, argued against such changes but accepted the constitution when it was passed and ratified. The "Nolichucky Constitution" placed Watauga in the vanguard of democratic government.
The constitution called for a new legislature immediately but gave Sevier two more years to act as governor. MIlitary considerations again occupied much of this time. He had more blockhouses built in the valley of the upper French Broad River, the area that today is the most densely populated part of the state but in the 1780s was an empty no-man's-land between Watauga and Carolina. Sevier remained active in the militia after stepping down. His obstinate, often brutal leadership had kept the state independent despite enormous pressures from all directions. Nevertheless, he had learned to be flexible in order to guarantee the state's security or unity, as his actions with the Cherokee treaty and the new constitution show.
Continental alliances (1785-1840)
The governors who succeeded Sevier knew that Watauga could not stay independent through force alone. In the next few decades Watauga emerged as a leading voice for continental alliance.
Cherokee people began to come in greater numbers in the 1790s. The legislature set aside land for village and individual plots along the upper French Broad valley, calling it Agiqua County after the Cherokee name for that stretch of the river. Other counties were carved out of the rugged country around it as they became populated, mostly with Cherokee and other Indian or Mixed settlers eking out a living from the hillsides.
Most Wataugans had warily listened to Virginia's calls for greater unity among the English republics, sensing a plot to take over their state. They had the same initial reaction to the first efforts to hold Congresses of all the English states. But Watauga's second governor, Andrew Caldwell, realized that the Congresses could help his state win wider recognition of its independence. He named delegates to the Second Congress of Cambridge, Maryland, in 1786, marking the start of Watauga's participation in confederal politics.
In 1803 war broke out again between Virginia and England, and Watauga had no choice but to join the Virginian side. It was caught between two enemies, Cherokee and Carolina, and relied on Virginia for essential military supplies. Wataugan soldiers away on campaign again found themselves mostly under Virginian commanders. But closer to home, Wataugans were able to hold their own in the tough guerrilla fights that they needed to wage in defending their passes and villages. They managed to hold the border so that when peace was declared, the state kept all the land it occupied. Watauga and Carolina signed the Treaty of Camden in 1810, some time after the end of the fighting. The treaty finally established normal relations between them, leaving Watauga free to develop in peace.
The person of David Crockett rose to prominence in the postwar years as one of the continent's foremost diplomats. Beginning with regular missions to the Cherokee, Crockett's career took him all over the territory between the Ohio and the Gulf of Mexico. He met with the colonial governors of Carolina, East Florida, and Louisiana and with leading chiefs from all the major Indian nations.
Crockett's vision was of a region where the different nations lived together in peace, where the colonial powers ceased to use the inland tribes as tools as they jockeyed for power. As his reputation grew, he was called to act as a mediator in all kinds of disputes, as in 1818 when he led the talks that ended decades of hostility between the Chicasaw and the French. Active in the developing confederal institutions, he became the first man from an English state to sit in the Congress of the Indies, a body of French and Spanish leaders in the Gulf region, and was the first Wataugan to be given a seat on the Grand Council, a post he held for life.
More than any specific agreement, Crockett's Treaties, seen as a whole, helped improve the political climate in the region, making peaceful relations both possible and expected. They set the stage for the south's gradual integration with the northern and Caribbean states. For this reason Wataugans will often claim that the entire ASB was their idea. Half the states of the confederation make the same claim, but it is important to note the contributions of Crockett and other Wataugan diplomats during this crucial era.
Freedom and commerce (1810-1890)
Early Watauga was a slave society. The land is not suitable for the big plantations that perpetuated slave labor elsewhere, but in this cash-poor society, slaves played a role as a store of wealth and sign of status. Records show that human beings were regularly used to buy land, settle court cases, and provide dowries in Watauga. In the process the state government became a significant slaveholder and often included its chattels in its annual payments to the Cherokee Nation.
The growth of a money economy undermined slavery's economic importance. This happened very slowly. Improved roads over the mountains increased trade and brought in coins from Virginia and Carolina. During the war Watauga's government officially adopted Virginian currency to help it pay its expenses. Afterward it established a mint of its own. A shortage of precious metals led it to establish a state bank a few years later so it could begin issuing notes.
Trade to the west developed as Cherokee's economy grew more complex and the settlements along the Ohio grew. Whitesville, located at the Forks of the Tanasi, became a major shipping center and Watauga's first city.
The same traffic brought new settlers to Watauga, among them a significant number of Quakers and others from Pennsylvania and New Netherland. They joined an existing community of Quakers who had won some converts among Watauga's Indian and Mixed population. As the Quakers increased in number they began to push for an end to slavery in the state. The movement gained momentum in Watauga's populist political culture. The state assembly started to regularly debate the slavery question in the early 1830s. In 1838 it passed a bill for gradual emancipation.
A railroad was laid from Whitesville over the mountains to Virginia in the mid-1860s, opening the way to still more trade. The railroad spurred an increase in manufacturing. Among other things, Boreoamerica was developing a taste for Watauga whiskey.
It's worth taking a moment to talk about the geography of Boreoamerican whiskey making. Scots-Irish settlers coming to the mountains in the 18th century usually get the credit for introducing the art to the region. By the early 19th century many of their English and Indian neighbors had also learned distilling and regional styles had begun to distinguish themselves. The first to achieve popularity came from the state of Allegheny and was distilled from a mash of corn and rye. Known as Monongahela, this whiskey became known throughout the west and out into the Great Plains. Mexican homesteaders took the style and made it their own, changing the name to "Angela." To the south, Upper Virginian distillers used a pure corn mash to make a sweeter style called Cantucky. South of that, Watauga distillers experimented with an elaborately slow filtration process to mellow and clarify their product. The continent's growing rail network ensured that Watauga whiskey began to appear all over. Today, it's fair to say that many people around the world enjoy a glass of "Watauga" having never heard of the state.
The town of Taliqua, founded as the main Cherokee settlement in southern Watauga, grew quickly in the age of rail. Textile and other factories appeared in the town and other parts of the valley. This growth diluted the indigenous character of the city, though the rural population all around remained largely Cherokee and remain so today.
Persistent poverty and signs of recovery (1890-present)
For all this, Watauga overall remained a poor mountain state. As the twentieth century turned, a significant portion of its people still relied on subsistence farming. Like mountain communities everywhere, Watauga often felt isolated despite its road and rail connections to the outside world. Many families lived much as their ancestors had in the previous century, seemingly overlooked by progress.
Despite these difficulties, Watauga was known for its rich culture. It was sometimes called in these years "the poorest of the English states," but it had many things in common with the Indian and Mixed states of Boreoamerica's interior - close to the land and to the family. Its English mountain culture had taken many Cherokee elements. Watauga music, for example, is related to mountain music in other parts of the Alleghenies, but with the addition of a strong drum beat due to Cherokee influence. Rural parts of the state's southern counties continued to speak Cherokee even while the main towns switched to English.
As economic troubles worsened in the early 20th century, Watauga turned to the confederal government for aid. Massive hydroelectricity projects brought electricity to most communities for the first time, but also destroyed many villages and farms. Other grants helped the state with bridges and other infrastructure. Today the state continues to rely on confederal support to stay afloat.
In the later twentieth century, nature-based tourism revived the fortunes of some communities in Watauga. The scenic Broad French valley attracted some of Carolina's elite to build vacation homes. Other vacationers were drawn to outdoor sporting in the forests and the new man-made lakes. These new opportunities provided incentive to conserve land, and the government organized new state parks and forests. Today Watauga has one of the highest percentages of protected land of any state in the ASB. Tourism has not solved the problem of poverty in Watauga, but it has provided a new source of income. Wataugans are fighters, and whatever happens with their economic future, rest assured they'll keep fighting.
