In snow ‘shoe-mouth deep' they came that 27th day of September 1780, a long column of mounted riflemen full of wrath and anger. The long slender rifles of the frontier (aka Flintlock American Long Rifle, Pennsylvania Rifle, Kentucky Rifle) were balanced across their saddles and knives strapped on their belts. They were "Over Mountain Men" from western North Carolina in the area that would later become northeast Tennessee in 1796. Several years earlier they had formed little settlements along the Watauga, Holston, and Nolichunky rivers on the western side of the Appalachian mountains.