This was the most westerly fort at the time of the Stanwix treaty, and about the rude fort was springing up the Watauga settlement. Other earlier settlements were made at Draper's Meadows and at Inglis Ferry on New River by families bearing those names. For more than a century the population of Virginia and North Carolina had been slowly sifting up the river valleys toward the West and by the time the king's proclamation was issued many cabins were already erected beyond the headwaters of streams which fell "into the Atlantic Ocean from the West or Northwest." Even the faithful Hillsborough seems to have recognized this since his boundary line passed through Chiswell's Mine on the Great Kanawha and the mouth of that river—much further west than a strict interpretation of the proclamation would allow.
This vanguard which was moving westward was led by explorers and hunters. Of two of the former, mention will be particularly made. The parties of hunters who now began to press beyond the furthest settlements, while they subsisted
