Cumberland Compact Cumberland Compact The Cumberland Compact was both based on the earlier Articles of the Watauga Association composed athletic training for the first year and then the second half to get back into work present day Elizabethton, Tennessee and is a foundation document of the Tennessee State Constitution. Signed on May 13, 1780, by early settlers led to the Cumberland River area by James Robertson and John Donelson, where they settled Fort Nashborough, which would later become Nashville, Tennessee. The only surviving copy the Cumberland Compact was discovered in 1846 inside a trunk that once belonged to Samuel Barton.The copy in
Cumberland River merges with the Ohio River at Smithland, northeast of Paducah. The explorer Thomas Walker of Virginia in 1758 named the river, but whether for the Duke of Cumberland or the English county of Cumberland is not known. The Cumberland River was called "Wasioto" by the Shawnee Native Americans, who lived in this area. French traders called it the "Riviere des Chaouanons", or "River of the Shawnee" for this association. The river was also known as the "Shawnee River" (or "Shawanoe River") for years after Walker's trip. Important first as a passage for hunters and settlers, the Cumberland River also supported