In the articles then drawn up they agreed to "rent or purchase" a tract of land from the Indian owners of the soil for the express purpose of "settling the country." Each partner obligated himself to "furnish his Quota of Expenses necessary towards procuring the grant." In full anticipation of the grave dangers to be encountered, they solemnly bound themselves, as "equal sharers in the property," to "support each other with our lives and fortunes." Negotiations with the Indians were begun at once.
Accompanied by Colonel Nathaniel Hart and guided by the experienced Indian-trader, Thomas Price, Judge Henderson visited the Cherokee chieftains at the Otari towns.

After elaborate consultations, the latter deputed the old chieftain, Atta-kulla-kulla, a young buck, and a squaw, "to attend the said Henderson and Hart to North Carolina, and there examine the Goods and Merchandize which had been by them offered as the Consideration of the purchase." The goods purchased at Cross Creek (now Fayetteville, North Carolina), in which the Louisa Company "had embarked a large amount," met the entire approval of the Indians--the squaw in particular shrewdly examining the goods in the interest of the women of the tribe.
On January 6, 1775, the company was again enlarged, and given the name of the Transylvania Company-the three new partners being David Hart, brother to Thomas and Nathaniel, Leonard Henley Bullock, a prominent citizen of Granville, and James Hogg, of Hillsborough, a native Scotchman and one of the most influential men in the colony.

In the elaborate agreement drawn up reference is explicitly made to the contingency of "settling and voting as a proprietor and giving Rules and Regulations for the Inhabitants etc." Hillsborough was the actual starting-point for the westward movement, the first emigrants, traveling thence to the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga.

In speaking of the departure of the settlers, the first movement of extended and permanent westward migration, an eye-witness quaintly says: "At this place [Hillsborough] I saw the first party of emigrant families that moved to Kentucky under the auspices of Judge Henderson.

They marched out of the town with considerable solemnity, and to many their destination seemed as remote as if it had been to the South Sea Islands." Meanwhile, the "Proposals for the encouragement of settling the lands etc.," issued on Christmas Day, 1774, were quickly spread broadcast through the colony and along the border." It was the greatest sensation North Carolina had known since Alamance; and Archibald Neilson, deputy-auditor and naval officer of the colony, inquired with quizzical anxiety: "Pray, is Dick Henderson out of his head ?" The most liberal terms, proffered by one quite in possession of his head, were embodied in these proposals.