Cumberland Mountains

Cumberland Mountains here means the high, wooded ridges of the southern Appalachians, where the Blue Ridge escarpment rises above the foothills of the Carolina piedmont. Long ridges running northeast and southwest, separated by deep coves and rushing creeks, made east-west travel slow and dangerous. Cherokee hunters used the high balsam ridges and their springs, and the mountain passes were the only practical routes between the Tennessee valley and the Carolina settlements. In 1775 Richard Henderson's Transylvania Company bought land from Cherokee leaders at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga, and the following year Cherokee warriors attacked the frontier settlements along these same ridges.