Written by Guest Author Kathy Warnes of http://maritimemoments.wordpress.com/ and http://discoverfunhistory.webs.com/
Part Two:
The Flotilla Reaches Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River
After the flotilla had been on the river for a few hours on Sunday, March 12, 1780, people heard cocks crowing. They passed an Indian town where they were fired upon, but received no injuries. They came in sight of the Muscle Shoals about ten o’clock and stopped on the northern shore at the upper end of the shoals in order to search for the signs that Captain James Robertson was to have left for them there.
Captain Robertson had set out from the Holston early in the fall of 1779 to travel by the way of Kentucky to the Big Salt Lick on the Cumberland River. Then he and his company were to come across from the Big Salt Lick to the upper end of the shoals and leave signs to indicate that they had been there. The signs would show the Donelson flotilla that it was practical to complete the journey by land. After much searching, Colonel Donelson and his party could find no signs from Robertson that he had been there. They concluded that it would not be wise to attempt the rest of the trip overland and decided to continue down the river.
After trimming their boats as best they could, they ran through the shoals before night. People who had never before seen the shoals were terrified by their appearance. The water roared with a deafening thunder that could be heard some distance away. The current ran in every possible direction and it heaped driftwood on the points of the island so that it resembled ship wrecks. The company’s boats frequently dragged on the bottom and seemed to be in constant danger of hitting it.
Colonel Donelson described how the battle with the shoals ended. “But, by the hand of Providence, we are now preserved from this danger also. I know now the length of this wonderful shoal: it has been represented to me to be twenty-five or thirty miles; if so, we must have descended very rapidly as indeed we did, for we passed it in about three hours. Came to and camped on the northern shore, not far below the shoals, for the night.”
The Adventure Reaches the Ohio River
From Wednesday, March 15, to Monday, March 20 the flotilla made good time and arrived at the mouth of the Tennessee near its lower point, immediately on the bank of the Ohio. Colonel Donelson reported, “Our situation here is truly disagreeable. The river is very high, and the current rapid, our boats not constructed for the purposes of steering a rapid stream, our provisions exhausted, the crew almost worn down by hunger and fatigue, and know not what distance we have to go or what time it will take to our place of destination.”
Several boats did not attempt to climb the rapid current, but started instead to descend for the Mississippi and Natchez. Others headed for the Illinois, including Donelson’s son in law and daughter, but Colonel Donelson remained determined to continue his course for the Cumberland. Suffering much from hunger and fatigue, the voyagers spent the next three days camped on the south bank of the Ohio.
The Adventure Reaches the Cumberland River
Then on Friday, March 24, about three o’clock, they came to the mouth of a river that Colonel Donelson thought might be the Cumberland. Some of the travelers did not think it could be the Cumberland, because it was so much smaller than anyone had expected, but Colonel Donelson had never heard of any river running between the Cumberland and the Tennessee.
The river seemed to flow with a gentle current and Donelson and the others pushed up some distance and camped for the night. The next day they were encouraged because the river grew wider and the current very gentle. Everyone became convinced that the river was the Cumberland. Colonel Donelson got much use out of a small, square sail that he fixed up on the day they left the mouth of the river. To prevent any ill effects from sudden gusts of wind, he stationed a man at each of the lower corners of the sheet with directions to give way whenever necessary.
On March 26, 1789, the party obtained some buffalo meat which they considered poor but palatable. The next day they killed a swan, which they thought delicious, and on Tuesday the 28th, they again killed some buffalo. On Wednesday the 29th of March they continued to navigate the river and gathered some herbs on the bottoms of the Cumberland. Some of the company called these herbs “Shawnee Salad,” but they were probably dandelion greens. The next day, Thursday, March 30, they continued their voyage and killed more buffalo.
After floating some distance on Friday, March 31, the company met Colonel Richard Henderson who was running the line between Virginia and North Carolina. Colonel Henderson gave the party all of the information it desired and informed everyone that he had purchased a quantity of corn in Kentucky to be shipped at the Falls of the Ohio for the use of the Cumberland settlement. The flotilla did not have any bread and had been surviving on the buffalo that the men had killed. Since everyone was bone tired, they made slow progress. At night they camped near the mouth of a little river, and below that, a handsome bottom of rich land. Here some of the men found a pair of hand millstones set up for grinding, but they appeared not to have been used for a long time.
The flotilla continued to travel uneventfully until April 12, 1780, when it came to the mouth of a little river running on the north side. Moses Renfroe and his company called the river the “Red River,” and decided to settle on its banks. They took leave of the flotilla.
The rest of the company continued up the Cumberland and on Monday, April 24 they arrived at their journey’s end at the Big Salt Lick. They found Captain Robertson and his company, and Colonel Donelson exalted in reuniting them with their families and friends who had been entrusted to their care. Colonel Donelson concluded his Journal by saying, “Though our prospects at present are dreary we have found a few log cabins which have been built on a cedar bluff above the Lick by Capt. Robertson and his company.”
Stalwart Rachel Jackson stepped ashore to begin her life at Nashville on the Tennessee frontier.
References
John Donelson. “Journal of a Voyage Intended By God’s Permission, In The Good Boat Adventure, From Fort Patrick Henry, On Holston River, To The French Salt Spring on Cumberland River, Kept By John Donelson.”
Caldwell, Mary French. General Jackson’s Lady. Nashville: Privately Printed by the ladies Hermitage Association, 1936.
Caldwell,Mary French. Tennessee: The Dangerous Example (Nashville: Aurora Publishers, Inc., 1974), 12
Minnigerode, Meade, “Rachel Jackson: An Informal Biography,” Saturday Evening Post (May 1925): 26-30.
