Fort Watauga, also known as Fort Caswell, was a fortification located in the Watauga River's Sycamore Shoals near modern-day Elizabethton, Tennessee. It was constructed from 1775 to 1776 by the Watauga Association, a semi-autonomous government founded by American settlers living near the river, to defend the settlers against attacks from British-allied Indians. The fort was originally named Fort Caswell after the governor of North Carolina, Richard Caswell.
In the 1970s, as part of the United States Bicentennial celebrations, the government of Tennessee authorized a reconstruction of Fort Watauga. A group of archaeologists conducted excavations in the Sycamore Shoals area and uncovered several trenches believed to have been part of the fort's walls. The fort was then rebuilt based on information gained about the fort's design from the excavation, descriptions of the fort in historical sources, and the general design of typical Appalachian frontier forts. The reconstructed fort is now part of Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park.
History
Watauga settlement
During the late 1760's, Anglo-American colonists began establishing settlements in the Holston, Watauga and Nolichucky river valleys in the southwestern region of the British colony of Virginia. Along the Watauga River, white settlers were drawn to the Watauga Old Fields, an ancient Indian gathering place. The Watauga Old Fields consisted of flat, cleared land located along the Sycamore Shoals, a relatively low stretch of the Watauga River where colonists and explorers could cross with ease. The settlers quickly came into conflict with the Cherokee and other Indian tribes which had traditionally used the region as a hunting ground and resisted American invasion with force.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 and several subsequent treaties placed the boundary of British-controlled territory at the southern fork of the Holston River, and in the early 1770's, Anglo-American settlers outside this boundary were ordered by the Crown to leave. Though the settlers leased their lands from Cherokee chiefs in 1772 and purchased them in 1775, they were still ordered to leave as these agreements violated the 1763 proclamation. In addition, a Cherokee faction led by the young chief Dragging Canoe vehemently opposed the sale of tribal lands to the colonists, and threatened to attack any American settler in the region. In 1774 and 1775, both British Indian Department official John Stuart and governor of North Carolina Josiah Martin issued repeated calls for settlers south of the Holston to leave.
July 1776 Cherokee invasion
The outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775 further agitated the tense situation on the Appalachian frontier. Settlers along with Watauga and Nolichucky river generally supported the Patriot cause, and formed a committee of safety along with founding the Washington District. In January 1776, Dragging Canoe and the British forged an alliance, and in April of that year British agents supplied the Cherokee with a large cache of weapons to use in attacks against American colonists. Now well-armed, the Cherokee sent a message to settlers along the Watauga River, giving them twenty days to leave Cherokee lands or face attack.
The settlers, meanwhile, had been anticipating a Cherokee attack. They undertook various preparatory measures, which included buying weapons and ammunition via the Fincastle County, Virginia committee of safety, gathering foodstuffs and medicine, and constructing and strenghtening various fortifications in the region. One of these forts was Fort Caswell, named after the governor of North Carolina, Richard Caswell. In early July 1775, Cherokee woman Nancy Ward tipped off the Cherokee attack plans to American trader Isaac Thomas, who proceeded to deliver the news to John Sevier, who was at the Nolichucky settlement (near modern Limestone) overseeing the construction of Fort Lee. The news alarmed the settlers, and most of them fled to Fort Caswell, forcing Sevier to flee likewise and abandon Fort Lee's completion.
