The women wove good clothing, the men procured good food, the log-cabins, if homely and rough, yet gave ample warmth and shelter.

The families throve, and life was happy, even though varied with toil, danger, and hardship.

Books were few, and it was some years before the first church,--Presbyterian, of course,--was started in the region.[37] The backwoods Presbyterians managed their church affairs much as they did their civil government: each congregation appointed a committee to choose ground, to build a meeting-house, to collect the minister's salary, and to pay all charges, by taxing the members proportionately for the same, the committee being required to turn in a full account, and receive instructions, at a general session or meeting held twice every year.[38] Thus the Watauga folk were the first Americans who, as a separate body, moved into the wilderness to hew out dwellings for themselves and their children, trusting only to their own shrewd heads, stout hearts, and strong arms, unhelped and unhampered by the power nominally their sovereign.[39] They built up a commonwealth which had many successors; they showed that the frontiersmen could do their work unassisted; for they not only proved that they were made of stuff stern enough to hold its own against outside pressure of any sort, but they also made it evident that having won the land they were competent to govern both it and themselves.

They were the first to do what the whole nation has since done.

It has often been said that we owe all our success to our surroundings; that any race with our opportunities could have done as well as we have done.