<P> The westerners' two main demands--protection from the Indians and the right to navigate the Mississippi River--went mainly unheeded during the 1780s . North Carolina's insensitivity led frustrated East Tennesseans in 1784 to form the breakaway State of Franklin . </P> <P> John Sevier was named governor, and the fledgling state began operating as an independent, though unrecognized, government . At the same time, leaders of the Cumberland settlements made overtures for an alliance with Spain, which controlled the lower Mississippi River and was held responsible for inciting the Indian raids . In drawing up the Watauga and Cumberland Compacts, early Tennesseans had already exercised some of the rights of self - government and were showing signs of a willingness to take political matters into their own hands . </P> <P> Such stirrings of independence caught the attention of North Carolina, which began to reassert control over its western counties . These policies and internal divisions among East Tennesseans doomed the short - lived State of Franklin, which passed out of existence by early 1789 . </P> <P> When North Carolina ratified the Constitution of the United States in 1789, it also ceded its western lands, the "Tennessee country", to the Federal government . North Carolina had used these lands as a means of rewarding its Revolutionary War soldiers . In the Cession Act of 1789, it reserved the right to satisfy further land claims in Tennessee . </P>

What was tennessee before it became a state