Topic summary
Overmountain settlements
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Overmountain Men.
The Overmountain settlements
In the late 1760s and early 1770s, Euro-American settlers began pouring into what is now northeastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia, causing considerable agitation among the Overhill Cherokees and other tribes who controlled the area. The Treaty of Lochaber, signed in 1770 between the British and the Cherokee, moved the boundary of British territory south to Long Island of the Holston (modern Kingsport, Tennessee). While this brought settlements north of the Holston under British protection, the settlers south of the river were ordered to leave.