The Treaty of Holston: 235 Years Ago, a Pivotal Event Led to the Founding of Knoxville 

On July 2, 1791, some 235 years ago, Gov. William Blount likely woken up in his little cabin along the river and looked forward to the successful conclusion of a conference with Cherokee chiefs that had already lasted the best part of a week. He would have been eager to finalize what would become known as the Treaty of Holston. 

Although, in retrospect, it wouldn’t be deemed a lasting success, particularly by the Cherokee, at the time Blount may have been reasonably pleased with its outcome. Except for one condition: the location of his new territorial capital. 

Blount had not only been appointed the governor of the Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio (commonly known as the Southwest Territory) by President George Washington, but also he served as Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the territory. Included in that general “Indian” catch-all phrase would have been members of Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and other Indigenous peoples, but it appears this treaty would be signed just by the Cherokee.

Blount was aided by someone that native American chiefs knew and trusted reasonably well: James “Trooper” Armstrong, who would serve as an interpreter during these negotiations and be an early resident of the new town. 

According to J.G.M. Ramsey’s Annals of Tennessee (1853), the Cherokee told Armstrong that they preferred to meet where the French Broad River joined the Holston (at what would be known as the Forks of the River), but Blount chose to host the meeting on the river close to the fort established by James White, who settled here about five years before. 

Here, at the mouth at White’s Creek (later First Creek), some 41 Cherokee chiefs assembled and parleyed with Blount, through Trooper Armstrong, in a bid to agree on certain terms. The latest in a long line of treaties, would this one be any different? 

“The treaty was an attempt to impose order on a region,” wrote Dr. Warren Dockter, CEO of the East Tennessee Historical Society, recently wrote online, “that had known very little of it. It established boundaries, promised peace, and formally recognized a relationship between the United States and the Cherokee Nation. For federal officials like Henry Knox, it represented a vision of expansion through diplomacy rather than conquest.”

Realizing that James White had chosen well in the somewhat protected site for his own fort, Blount placed his capital right here instead. On July 2 that year, the concept of Knoxville as a frontier settlement was born, if not in name yet. Shortly afterward, Blount would name it after his superior up in Boston, the aforementioned Revolutionary War General Henry Knox. A lasting tip-of-the hat to Knox might afford the new town some protection in the coming months and years ahead. 

Since no one present that we know of in 1791 ever tried to illustrate it (or if they did it’s not been preserved), any future imagined drawings or paintings of the proceedings will unlikely ever do justice to that historical moment. Inevitably, some fanciful depictions would creep in. Even historian J.G.M. Ramsey claimed he couldn’t find any officials records of the event, so he had to rely on people’s memories, or what he described as “Tradition says,” to describe it. Ramsey wrote: 

“Governor Blount received and entertained the chieftains and head warriors with signal intentions and marked ceremonials. The treaty ground was at the foot of Water Street [now Central Street], where the Governor appeared in full dress. He wore a sword and military hat, and acted throughout the occasion the polite and accomplished gentleman, the dignified officer and courteous negotiator. He remained seated near his marquee, under and surrounded by the tall trees which then shaded the banks of the Holston.” 

Tradition also says that in addition to the Cherokee chiefs, as many as 1,200 warriors and other women and children gathered by the river. To prepare for such a large crowd, Blount’s men cleared some vegetation along the riverfront, building a few Government “shanties” that become homes and places of business in the first iteration of Knoxville. 

One man, who later described (from memory) what the frontier settlement then looked like was Hugh Dunlap. He arrived here in early 1792 when many of the original lots had not yet been built, and was an early lot developer and store owner. A half century later he recalled: 

“As then seen, the site of the future Knoxville was lovely in the extreme—almost entirely sheltered by the primitive forest, in its rich foliage, and having an air of enchanting coolness and rural retirement  and seclusion—its quiet disturbed only by the playful murmurings of rivulets, formed by the several springs, and winding through their grassy borders in stillness to the creeks. Wooded hills and sylvan slopes completed the picture of rural beauty.”

No wonder that James White and his colleagues found this place so appealing a place to settle. 

Today, you can walk down to the mouth of First Creek and ponder these events in front of a 13-ton, 10- foot-high statue memorializing the Treaty of Holston. It has been there since 1998 when members of the Cherokee Nation attended its dedication. Raymond Kaskey of Washington, D.C., once said of his creation, “I wanted to create a work of art that makes people think of the consequences of this event while not advocating a particular point of view.” 

The temporary exhibition, “Lines Were Drawn: The Treaty of Holston and its Legacy,” now open at the Museum of East Tennessee History at the East Tennessee History Center, also invites visitors to ponder the consequences of the historic event. 

This special Tennessee America 250 exhibition expertly places the treaty within the context of rapidly changing borders and settlements throughout 1700s. As the exhibit explains, “That document drew lines on a map. It also drew lines in law and in memory, many of which have never been erased.”   

Several interpretive video screens help guide visitors through the exhibit, and it’s worthwhile pausing at each one to gain insights into the detail and meaning beyond the maps that are on view, many rare ones on loan from the Knox County Archives and the McClung Historical Collection. Some maps show how the Cherokee viewed their lands, while others reflect the increasing influence of the white settlers and federal and state leaders’ motives.

The exhibit also brings into focus several Cherokee leaders (Hanging Maw, John Watts, Doublehead) who signed the Treaty of Holston, and their differing reasons for doing so might challenge some assumptions.

From a Knoxville-history point of view, there are also a couple of welcome surprises. The large canvas, “The Signing of the Hoston Treaty,” painted in 1901 by Knoxville painter James W. Wallace, is a central feature of the exhibit. It usually hangs in the hallway of the Custom House where the ETHS offices are. Here you can step back and take it all in. It’s how one painter imagined the event, more than a century later.

Close by is another 1901 painting by Wallace’s friend Lloyd Branson. “The Knoxville Blockhouse” has, for years, hung upstairs high on the wall of the stately Reading Room in the McClung Historical Collection, two floors above the exhibit. Here, at eye level, you can better appreciate Branson’s artistry. Built in 1793, the Blockhouse stood where the Knox County Courthouse is today and would have been the largest site to be cleared of vegetation in those early days, forever erasing the “wooded hills and sylvan slopes” along the riverfront there. It appears that Col. W. A. Henderson, a judge and self-appointed Knoxville historian of the late 1890s and early 1900s, commissioned the painting and bought it from Branson after it was finished. Then more than 100 years in the past, the Blockhouse was once known as the “most defensible and formidable fort in Tennessee.” How long it stood there is difficult to know. One of the earliest buildings erected on that spot was be the old Mynatt’s Hotel (later known as the Mansion House), that opened in 1836.

What’s interesting is that Branson based his painting “on word descriptions.” Those words are currently readable on the bottom of the painting, not visible when it hangs upstairs, nor on the many versions of the painting that appeared on postcards in the early-mid 20th century. Contemporary newspaper articles make out that a few old timers remembered the structure, though they must have lived long lives if they had it seen it with their own eyes all those years ago.    

The exhibition runs until February 14 next year, and admission is free during its run.

https://www.easttnhistory.org/order-diplomacy-and-the-making-of-east-tennessee/

Note: On Friday, October 2 at the East Tennessee History Center, the Knoxville History Project will host a one-day symposium, “The Road to Knoxville: How Revolutionary War veterans and pioneers claimed a new land, founded a new city, and forged a new state on the western frontier.” Several eminent historians, including Jack Neely, Dr. Warren Dockter, Dr. Chris Magra, and Prof. Brooke Bauer will present a new look at the pivotal events and key players who settled in this region during the mid-late 1700s when the landscape was rapidly transitioning from Native American hunting grounds, to land claimed by settlers, and the emergence of new states; and changes that fueled hostilities between the settlers and Native Americans.

KHP will also highlight a broader array of known characters, expanding the story beyond the usual list of government officials and settlers, who are typically associated with Knoxville’s founding story. Learn more at: https://knoxvillehistoryproject.org/america-250/