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AMERICAN PIONEERS AND PATRIOTS.
DAVID CROCKETT:
HIS
LIFE AND ADVENTURES
BY
JOHN S. C. ABBOTT
ILLUSTRATED.
PREFACE.
David Crockett certainly was not a model man. But he was a
representative man. He was conspicuously one of a very numerous class,
still existing, and which has heretofore exerted a very powerful
influence over this republic. As such, his wild and wondrous life is
worthy of the study of every patriot. Of this class, their modes of
life and habits of thought, the majority of our citizens know as little
as they do of the manners and customs of the Comanche Indians.
No man can make his name known to the forty millions of this great and
busy republic who has not something very remarkable in his character or
his career. But there is probably not an adult American, in all these
widespread States, who has not heard of David Crockett. His life is a
veritable romance, with the additional charm of unquestionable truth.
It opens to the reader scenes in the lives of the lowly, and a state of
semi-civilization, of which but few of them can have the faintest idea.
It has not been my object, in this narrative, to defend Colonel
Crockett or to condemn him, but to present his peculiar character
exactly as it was. I have therefore been constrained to insert some
things which I would gladly have omitted.
JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.
FAIR HAVEN, CONN.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
Parentage and Childhood.
The Emigrant.--Crossing the Alleghanies.--The Boundless
Wilderness.--The Hut on the Holston.--Life's Necessaries.--The
Massacre.--Birth of David Crockett.--Peril of the
Boys.--Anecdote.--Removal to Greenville; to Cove Creek.--Increased
Emigration.--Loss of the Mill.--The Tavern.--Engagement with the
Drover.--Adventures in the Wilderness.--Virtual Captivity.--The
Escape.--The Return.--The Runaway.--New Adventures. . . . 7
CHAPTER II.
Youthful Adventures.
David at Gerardstown.--Trip to Baltimore.--Anecdotes.--He ships for
London.--Disappointment.--Defrauded of his Wages.--Escapes.--New
Adventures.--Crossing the River.--Returns Home.--His Reception.--A Farm
Laborer.--Generosity to his Father.--Love Adventure.--The Wreck of his
Hopes.--His School Education.--Second Love adventure.--Bitter
Disappointment.--Life in the Backwoods.--Third Love Adventure. . . . 35
CHAPTER III.
Marriage and Settlement.
Rustic Courtship.--The Rival Lover.--Romantic Incident. The Purchase of
a Horse.--The Wedding.--Singular Ceremonies.--The Termagant.--Bridal
Days.--They commence Housekeeping.--The Bridal mansion and
Outfit.--Family Possessions.--The Removal to Central Tennessee.--Mode
of Transportation.--The New Income and its Surroundings.--Busy
Idleness.--The Third Move.--The Massacre at Fort Mimms. . . . 54
CHAPTER IV.
The Soldier Life.
War with the Creeks.--Patriotism of Crockett.--Remonstrances of his
Wife.--Enlistment.--The Rendezvous.--Adventure of the Scouts.--Friendly
Indians,--A March through the Forest.--Picturesque Scene.--The Midnight
Alarm.--March by Moonlight.--Chagrin of Crockett.--Advance into
Alabama.--War's Desolations.--Indian Stoicism.--Anecdotes of Andrew
Jackson.--Battles, Carnage, and Woe. . . . 93
CHAPTER V.
Indian Warfare.
The Army at Fort Strother.--Crockett's Regiment.--Crockett at
Home.--His Reenlistment.--Jackson Surprised.--Military Ability of the
Indians.--Humiliation of the Creeks.--March to Florida.--Affairs at
Pensacola.--Capture of the City.--Characteristics of Crockett.--The
Weary March,--Inglorious Expedition.--Murder of Two
Indians.--Adventures at the Island.--The Continued March.--Severe
Sufferings.--Charge upon the Uninhabited Village. . . . 124
CHAPTER VI.
The Camp and the Cabin.
Deplorable Condition of the Army.--Its wanderings.--Crockett's
Benevolence.--Cruel Treatment of the Indians.--A Gleam of Good
Luck.--The Joyful Feast.--Crockett's Trade with the Indian.--Visit to
the Old Battlefield.--Bold Adventure of Crockett.--His Arrival
Home.--Death of his Wife.--Second Marriage.--Restlessness.--Exploring
Tour.--Wild Adventures.--Dangerous Sickness.--Removal to the West.--His
New Home. . . . 155
CHAPTER VII.
The Justice of Peace and the Legislator.
Vagabondage.--Measures of Protection.--Measures of
Government.--Crockett's Confession.--A Candidate for Military
Honors.--Curious Display of Moral Courage.--The Squirrel Hunt.--A
Candidate for the Legislature.--Characteristic
Electioneering.--Specimens of his Eloquence.--Great Pecuniary
Calamity.--Expedition to the Far West.--Wild Adventures.--The Midnight
Carouse.--A Cabin Reared. . . . 183
CHAPTER VIII.
Life on the Obion.
Hunting Adventures.--The Voyage up the River.--Scenes in the
Cabin.--Return Home.--Removal of the Family.--Crockett's Riches.--A
Perilous Enterprise.--Reasons for his Celebrity.--Crockett's
Narrative.--A Bear-Hunt.--Visit to Jackson.--Again a Candidate for the
Legislature.--Electioneering and Election. . . . 212
CHAPTER IX.
Adventures in the Forest, on the River, and in the City
The Bear Hunter's Story.--Service in the Legislature.--Candidate for
Congress.--Electioneering.--The New Speculation.--Disastrous
Voyage.--Narrow Escape.--New Electioneering Exploits.--Odd
Speeches.--The Visit to Crockett's Cabin.--His Political Views.--His
Honesty.--Opposition to Jackson.--Scene at Raleigh.--Dines with the
President.--Gross Caricature.--His Annoyance. . . . 240
CHAPTER X.
Crockett's Tour to the North and the East.
His Reelection to Congress.--The Northern Tour.--First Sight of a
Railroad.--Reception in Philadelphia.--His First Speech.--Arrival in
New York.--The Ovation there.--Visit to Boston.--Cambridge and
Lowell.--Specimens of his Speeches.--Expansion of his Ideas.--Rapid
Improvement. . . . 267
CHAPTER XI.
The Disappointed Politician.--Off for Texas.
Triumphal Return.--Home Charms Vanish.--Loses His Election.--Bitter
Disappointment.--Crockett's Poetry.--Sets out for Texas.--Incidents of
the Journey.--Reception at Little Rock.--The Shooting Match.--Meeting a
Clergyman.--The Juggler.--Crockett a Reformer.--The Bee Hunter.--The
Rough Strangers.--Scene on the Prairie. . . . 290
CHAPTER XII.
Adventures on the Prairie.
Disappearance of the Bee Hunter.--The Herd of Buffalo Crockett
lost.--The Fight with the Cougar.--Approach of Savages.--Their
Friendliness.--Picnic on the Prairie.--Picturesque Scene.--The Lost
Mustang recovered.--Unexpected Reunion.--Departure of the
Savages.--Skirmish with the Mexicans.--Arrival at the Alamo. . . .312
CHAPTER XIII.
Conclusion.
The Fortress of Alamo.--Colonel Bowie.--Bombardment of the
Fort.--Crockett's Journal.--Sharpshooting.--Fight outside of the
Fort.--Death of the Bee Hunter.--Kate of Nacogdoches.--Assault on the
Citadel.--Crockett a Prisoner.--His Death. . . . 340
DAVID CROCKETT.
CHAPTER I.
Parentage and Childhood.
The Emigrant.--Crossing the Alleghanies.--The boundless
Wilderness.--The Hut on the Holston.--Life's Necessaries.--The
Massacre.--Birth of David Crockett.--Peril of the
Boys.--Anecdote.--Removal to Greenville; to Cove Creek.--Increased
Emigration.--Loss of the Mill.--The Tavern.--Engagement with the
Drover.--Adventures in the Wilderness.--Virtual Captivity.--The
Escape.--The Return.--The Runaway.--New Adventures.
A little more than a hundred years ago, a poor man, by the name of
Crockett, embarked on board an emigrant-ship, in Ireland, for the New
World. He was in the humblest station in life. But very little is known
respecting his uneventful career excepting its tragical close. His
family consisted of a wife and three or four children. Just before he
sailed, or on the Atlantic passage, a son was born, to whom he gave the
name of John. The family probably landed in Philadelphia, and dwelt
somewhere in Pennsylvania, for a year or two, in one of those slab
shanties, with which all are familiar as the abodes of the poorest
class of Irish emigrants.
After a year or two, Crockett, with his little family, crossed the
almost pathless Alleghanies. Father, mother, and children trudged along
through the rugged defiles and over the rocky cliffs, on foot. Probably
a single pack-horse conveyed their few household goods. The hatchet and
the rifle were the only means of obtaining food, shelter, and even
clothing. With the hatchet, in an hour or two, a comfortable camp could
be constructed, which would protect them from wind and rain. The
camp-fire, cheering the darkness of the night, drying their often wet
garments, and warming their chilled limbs with its genial glow, enabled
them to enjoy that almost greatest of earthly luxuries, peaceful sleep.
The rifle supplied them with food. The fattest of turkeys and the most
tender steaks of venison, roasted upon forked sticks, which they held
in their hands over the coals, feasted their voracious appetites. This,
to them, was almost sumptuous food. The skin of the deer, by a rapid
and simple process of tanning, supplied them with moccasons, and
afforded material for the repair of their tattered garments.
We can scarcely comprehend the motive which led this solitary family to
push on, league after league, farther and farther from civilization,
through the trackless forests. At length they reached the Holston
River. This stream takes its rise among the western ravines of the
Alleghanies, in Southwestern Virginia. Flowing hundreds of miles
through one of the most solitary and romantic regions upon the globe,
it finally unites with the Clinch River, thus forming the majestic
Tennessee.
One hundred years ago, this whole region, west of the Alleghanies, was
an unexplored and an unknown wilderness. Its silent rivers, its
forests, and its prairies were crowded with game. Countless Indian
tribes, whose names even had never been heard east of the Alleghanies,
ranged this vast expanse, pursuing, in the chase, wild beasts scarcely
more savage than themselves.
The origin of these Indian tribes and their past history are lost in
oblivion. Centuries have come and gone, during which joys and griefs,
of which we now can know nothing, visited their humble lodges.
Providence seems to have raised up a peculiar class of men, among the
descendants of the emigrants from the Old World, who, weary of the
restraints of civilization, were ever ready to plunge into the wildest
depths of the wilderness, and to rear their lonely huts in the midst of
all its perils, privations, and hardships.
This solitary family of the Crocketts followed down the northwestern
banks of the Hawkins River for many a weary mile, until they came to a
spot which struck their fancy as a suitable place to build their Cabin.
In subsequent years a small village called Rogersville was gradually
reared upon this spot, and the territory immediately around was
organized into what is now known as Hawkins County. But then, for
leagues in every direction, the solemn forest stood in all its
grandeur. Here Mr. Crockett, alone and unaided save by his wife and
children, constructed a little shanty, which could have been but little
more than a hunter's camp. He could not lift solid logs to build a
substantial house. The hard-trodden ground was the only floor of the
single room which he enclosed. It was roofed with bark of trees piled
heavily on, which afforded quite effectual protection from the rain. A
hole cut through the slender logs was the only window. A fire was built
in one corner, and the smoke eddied through a hole left in the roof.
The skins of bears, buffaloes, and wolves provided couches, all
sufficient for weary ones, who needed no artificial opiate to promote
sleep. Such, in general, were the primitive homes of many of those bold
emigrants who abandoned the comforts of civilized life for the
solitudes of the wilderness.
They did not want for most of what are called the necessaries of life.
The river and the forest furnished a great variety of fish and game.
Their hut, humble as it was, effectually protected them from the
deluging tempest and the inclement cold. The climate was genial in a
very high degree, and the soil, in its wonderful fertility, abundantly
supplied them with corn and other simple vegetables. But the silence
and solitude which reigned are represented, by those who experienced
them, as at times something dreadful.
One principal motive which led these people to cross the mountains, was
the prospect of an ultimate fortune in the rise of land. Every man who
built a cabin and raised a crop of grain, however small, was entitled
to four hundred acres of land, and a preemption right to one thousand
more adjoining, to be secured by a land-office warrant.
In this lonely home, Mr. Crockett, with his wife and children, dwelt
for some months, perhaps years--we know not how long. One night, the
awful yell of the savage was heard, and a band of human demons came
rushing upon the defenceless family. Imagination cannot paint the
tragedy which ensued. Though this lost world, ever since the fall of
Adam, has been filled to repletion with these scenes of woe, it causes
one's blood to curdle in his veins as he contemplates this one deed of
cruelty and blood.
The howling fiends were expeditious in their work. The father and
mother were pierced by arrows, mangled with the tomahawk, and scalped.
One son, severely wounded, escaped into the forest. Another little boy,
who was deaf and dumb, was taken captive and carried by the Indians to
their distant tribe, where he remained, adopted into the tribe, for
about eighteen years. He was then discovered by some of his relatives,
and was purchased back at a considerable ransom. The torch was applied
to the cabin, and the bodies of the dead were consumed in the crackling
flames.
What became of the remainder of the children, if there were any others
present in this midnight scene of conflagration and blood, we know not.
There was no reporter to give us the details. We simply know that in
some way John Crockett, who subsequently became the father of that
David whose history we now write, was not involved in the general
massacre. It is probable that he was not then with the family, but that
he was a hired boy of all work in some farmer's family in Pennsylvania.
As a day-laborer he grew up to manhood, and married a woman in his own
sphere of life, by the name of Mary Hawkins. He enlisted as a common
soldier in the Revolutionary War, and took part in the battle of King's
Mountain. At the close of the war he reared a humble cabin in the
frontier wilds of North Carolina. There he lived for a few years, at
but one remove, in point of civilization, from the savages around him.
It is not probable that either he or his wife could read or write. It
is not probable that they had any religious thoughts; that their minds
ever wandered into the regions of that mysterious immortality which
reaches out beyond the grave. Theirs was apparently purely an animal
existence, like that of the Indian, almost like that of the wild
animals they pursued in the chase.
At length, John Crockett, with his wife and three or four children,
unintimidated by the awful fate of his father's family, wandered from
North Carolina, through the long and dreary defiles of the mountains,
to the sunny valleys and the transparent skies of East Tennessee. It
was about the year 1783. Here he came to a rivulet of crystal water,
winding through majestic forests and plains of luxuriant verdure. Upon
a green mound, with this stream flowing near his door, John Crockett
built his rude and floorless hut. Punching holes in the soil with a
stick, he dropped in kernels of corn, and obtained a far richer harvest
than it would be supposed such culture could produce. As we have
mentioned, the building of this hut and the planting of this crop made
poor John Crockett the proprietor of four hundred acres of land of
almost inexhaustible fertility.
In this lonely cabin, far away in the wilderness, David Crockett was
born, on the 17th of August, 1786. He had then four brothers.
Subsequently four other children were added to the family.
His childhood's home was more humble than the majority of the readers
of this volume can imagine. It was destitute of everything which, in a
higher state of civilization, is deemed essential to comfort. The
wigwam of the Indian afforded as much protection from the weather, and
was as well furnished, as the cabin of logs and bark which sheltered
his father's family. It would seem, from David Crockett's
autobiography, that in his childhood he went mainly without any
clothing, like the pappooses of an Indian squaw. These facts of his
early life must be known, that we may understand the circumstances by
which his peculiar character was formed.
He had no instruction whatever in religion, morals, manners, or mental
culture. It cannot be supposed that his illiterate parents were very
gentle in their domestic discipline, or that their example could have
been of any essential advantage in preparing him for the arduous
struggle of life. It would be difficult to find any human being, in a
civilized land, who can have enjoyed less opportunities for moral
culture than David Crockett enjoyed in his early years.
There was quite a fall on the Nolachucky River, a little below the
cabin of John Crockett. Here the water rushed foaming over the rocks,
with fury which would at once swamp any canoe. When David was four or
five years old, and several other emigrants had come and reared their
cabins in that vicinity, he was one morning out playing with his
brothers on the bank of the river. There was a canoe tied to the shore.
The boys got into it, and, to amuse themselves, pushed out into the
stream, leaving little David, greatly to his indignation, on the shore.
But the boys did not know how to manage the canoe, and though they
plied the paddies with all vigor, they soon found themselves caught in
the current, and floating rapidly down toward the falls, where, should
they be swept over, the death of all was inevitable.
A man chanced to be working in a field not far distant. He heard the
cries of the boys and saw their danger. There was not a moment to be
lost. He started upon the full run, throwing off coat and waistcoat and
shoes, in his almost frantic speed, till he reached the water. He then
plunged in, and, by swimming and wading, seized the canoe when it was
within but about twenty feet of the roaring falls. With almost
superhuman exertions he succeeded in dragging it to the shore.
This event David Crockett has mentioned as the first which left any
lasting imprint upon his memory. Not long after this, another
occurrence took place characteristic of frontier life. Joseph Hawkins,
a brother of David's mother, crossed the mountains and joined the
Crockett family in their forest home. One morning he went out to shoot
a deer, repairing to a portion of the forest much frequented by this
animal. As he passed a very dense thicket, he saw the boughs swaying to
and fro, where a deer was apparently browsing. Very cautiously he crept
within rifle-shot, occasionally catching a glimpse, through the thick
foliage, of the ear of the animal,--as he supposed.
Taking deliberate aim he fired, and immediately heard a loud outcry.
Rushing to the spot, he found that he had shot a neighbor, who was
there gathering grapes. The ball passed through his side, inflicting a
very serious though not a fatal wound, as it chanced not to strike any
vital part. The wounded man was carried home; and the rude surgery
which was practised upon him was to insert a silk handkerchief with a
ramrod in at the bullet-hole, and draw it through his body. He
recovered from the wound.
Such a man as John Crockett forms no local attachments, and never
remains long in one place. Probably some one came to his region and
offered him a few dollars for his improvements. He abandoned his cabin,
with its growing neighborhood, and packing his few household goods upon
one or two horses, pushed back fifty miles farther southwest, into the
trackless wilderness. Here he found, about ten miles above the present
site of Greenville, a fertile and beautiful region. Upon the banks of a
little brook, which furnished him with an abundant supply of pure
water, he reared another shanty, and took possession of another four
hundred acres of forest land. Some of his boys were now old enough to
furnish efficient help in the field and in the chase.
How long John Crockett remained here we know not. Neither do we know
what induced him to make another move. But we soon find him pushing
still farther back into the wilderness, with his hapless family of sons
and daughters, dooming them, in all their ignorance, to the society
only of bears and wolves. He now established himself upon a
considerable stream, unknown to geography, called Cue Creek.
David Crockett was now about eight years old. During these years
emigration had been rapidly flowing from the Atlantic States into this
vast and beautiful valley south of the Ohio. With the increasing
emigration came an increasing demand for the comforts of civilization.
Framed houses began to rise here and there, and lumber, in its various
forms, was needed.
John Crockett, with another man by the name of Thomas Galbraith,
undertook to build a mill upon Cove Creek. They had nearly completed
it, having expended all their slender means in its construction, when
there came a terrible freshet, and all their works were swept away. The
flood even inundated Crockett's cabin, and the family was compelled to
fly to a neighboring eminence for safety.
Disheartened by this calamity, John Crockett made another move.
Knoxville, on the Holston River, had by this time become quite a
thriving little settlement of log huts. The main route of emigration
was across the mountains to Abingdon, in Southwestern Virginia, and
then by an extremely rough forest-road across the country to the valley
of the Holston, and down that valley to Knoxville. This route was
mainly traversed by pack-horses and emigrants on foot. But stout
wagons, with great labor, could be driven through.
John Crockett moved still westward to this Holston valley, where he
reared a pretty large log house on this forest road; and opened what he
called a tavern for the entertainment of teamsters and other emigrants.
It was indeed a rude resting-place. But in a fierce storm the exhausted
animals could find a partial shelter beneath a shed of logs, with corn
to eat; and the hardy pioneers could sleep on bear-skins, with their
feet perhaps soaked with rain, feeling the warmth of the cabin fire.
The rifle of John Crockett supplied his guests with the choicest
venison steaks, and his wife baked in the ashes the "journey cake,"
since called johnny cake, made of meal from corn pounded in a mortar or
ground in a hand-mill. The brilliant flame of the pitch-pine knot
illumined the cabin; and around the fire these hardy men often kept
wakeful until midnight, smoking their pipes, telling their stories, and
singing their songs.
This house stood alone in the forest. Often the silence of the night
was disturbed by the cry of the grizzly bear and the howling of wolves.
Here David remained four years, aiding his father in all the laborious
work of clearing the land and tending the cattle. There was of course
no school here, and the boy grew up in entire ignorance of all book
learning. But in these early years he often went into the woods with
his gun in pursuit of game, and, young as he was, acquired considerable
reputation as a marksman.
One day, a Dutchman by the name of Jacob Siler came to the cabin,
driving a large herd of cattle. He had gathered them farther west, from
the luxuriant pastures in the vicinity of Knoxville, where cattle
multiplied with marvellous rapidity, and was taking them back to market
in Virginia. The drover found some difficulty in managing so many half
wild cattle, as he pressed them forward through the wilderness, and he
bargained with John Crockett to let his son David, who, as we have
said, was then twelve years of age, go with him as his hired help.
Whatever wages he gave was paid to the father.
The boy was to go on foot with this Dutchman four hundred miles,
driving the cattle. This transaction shows very clearly the hard and
unfeeling character of David's parents. When he reached the end of his
journey, so many weary leagues from home, the only way by which he
could return was to attach himself to some emigrant party or some
company of teamsters, and walk back, paying for such food as he might
consume, by the assistance he could render on the way. There are few
parents who could thus have treated a child of twelve years.
The little fellow, whose affections had never been more cultivated than
those of the whelp of the wolf or the cub of the bear, still left home,
as he tells us, with a heavy heart. The Dutchman was an entire stranger
to him, and he knew not what treatment he was to expect at his hands.
He had already experienced enough of forest travel to know its
hardships. A journey of four hundred miles seemed to him like going to
the uttermost parts of the earth. As the pioneers had smoked their
pipes at his father's cabin fire, he had heard many appalling accounts
of bloody conflicts with the Indians, of massacres, scalpings,
tortures, and captivity.
David's father had taught him, very sternly, one lesson, and that was
implicit and prompt obedience to his demands. The boy knew full well
that it would be of no avail for him to make any remonstrance.
Silently, and trying to conceal his tears, he set out on the perilous
enterprise. The cattle could be driven but about fifteen or twenty
miles a day. Between twenty and thirty days were occupied in the
toilsome and perilous journey. The route led them often through marshy
ground, where the mire was trampled knee-deep. All the streams had to
be forded. At times, swollen by the rains, they were very deep. There
were frequent days of storm, when, through the long hours, the poor boy
trudged onward, drenched with rain and shivering with cold. Their fare
was most meagre, consisting almost entirely of such game as they
chanced to shoot, which they roasted on forked sticks before the fire.
When night came, often dark and stormy, the cattle were generally too
much fatigued by their long tramp to stray away. Some instinct also
induced them to cluster together. A rude shanty was thrown up. Often
everything was so soaked with rain that it was impossible to build a
fire. The poor boy, weary and supperless, spattered with mud and
drenched with rain, threw himself upon the wet ground for that blessed
sleep in which the weary forget their woes. Happy was he if he could
induce one of the shaggy dogs to lie down by his side, that he might
hug the faithful animal in his arms, and thus obtain a little warmth.
Great was the luxury when, at the close of a toilsome day, a few pieces
of bark could be so piled as to protect from wind and rain, and a
roaring fire could blaze and crackle before the little camp. Then the
appetite which hunger gives would enable him to feast upon the tender
cuts of venison broiled upon the coals, with more satisfaction than the
gourmand takes in the choicest viands of the restaurant. Having feasted
to satiety, he would stretch himself upon the ground, with his feet to
the fire, and soon be lost to all earth's cares, in sweet oblivion.
The journey was safely accomplished. The Dutchman had a father-in-law,
by the name of Hartley, who lived in Virginia, having reared his cabin
within about three miles of the Natural Bridge. Here the boy's contract
came to an end. It would seem that the Dutchman was a good sort of man,
as the world goes, and that he treated the boy kindly. He was so well
pleased with David's energy and fidelity, that he was inclined to
retain him in his service. Seeing the boy's anxiety to return home, he
was disposed to throw around him invisible chains, and to hold him a
captive. He thus threw every possible hindrance in the way of his
return, offered to hire him as his boy of all work, and made him a
present of five or six dollars, which perhaps he considered payment in
advance, which bound the boy to remain with him until he had worked it
out.
David soon perceived that his movements were watched, and that he was
not his own master to go or stay as he pleased. This increased his
restlessness. Four or five weeks thus passed away, when, one morning,
three wagons laden with merchandise came along, bound to Knoxville.
They were driven by an old man by the name of Dugan, and his two
stalwart sons. They had traversed the road before, and David had seen
the old man at his father's tavern. Secretly the shrewd boy revealed to
him his situation, and his desire to get back to his home. The father
and sons conferred together upon the subject. They were moved with
sympathy for the boy, and, after due deliberation, told him that they
should stop for the night about seven miles from that place, and should
set out again on their journey with the earliest light of the morning;
and that if he could get to them before daylight, he might follow their
wagons.
It was Sunday morning, and it so happened that the Dutchman and the
family had gone away on a visit. David collected his clothes and the
little money he had, and hid them in a bundle under his bed. A very
small bundle held them all. The family returned, and, suspecting
nothing, all retired to sleep.
David had naturally a very affectionate heart. He never had been from
home before. His lonely situation roused all the slumbering emotions of
his childhood. In describing this event, he writes:
"I went to bed early that night, but sleep seemed to be a stranger to
me. For though I was a wild boy, yet I dearly loved my father and
mother; and their images appeared to be so deeply fixed in my mind that
I could not sleep for thinking of them. And then the fear that when I
should attempt to go out I should be discovered and called to a halt,
filled me with anxiety."
A little after midnight, when the family were in profoundest sleep,
David cautiously rose, and taking his little bundle, crept out doors.
To his disappointment he found that it was snowing fast, eight inches
having already fallen; and the wintry gale moaned dismally through the
treetops. It was a dark, moonless night. The cabin was in the fields,
half a mile from the road along which the wagons had passed. This boy
of twelve years, alone in the darkness, was to breast the gale and wade
through the snow, amid forest glooms, a distance of seven miles, before
he could reach the appointed rendezvous.
For a moment his heart sank within him. Then recovering his resolution,
he pushed out boldly into the storm. For three hours he toiled along,
the snow rapidly increasing in depth until it reached up to his knees.
Just before the dawn of the morning he reached the wagons. The men were
up, harnessing their teams. The Dunns were astounded at the appearance
of the little boy amid the darkness and the tempest. They took him into
the house, warmed him by the fire, and gave him a good breakfast,
speaking to him words of sympathy and encouragement. The affectionate
heart of David was deeply moved by this tenderness, to which he was
quite unaccustomed.
And then, though exhausted by the toil of a three hours' wading through
the drifts, he commenced, in the midst of a mountain storm, a long
day's journey upon foot. It was as much as the horses could do to drag
the heavily laden wagons over the encumbered road. However weary, he
could not ride. However exhausted, the wagons could not wait for him;
neither was there any place in the smothering snow for rest.
Day after day they toiled along, in the endurance of hardships now with
difficulty comprehended. Sometimes they were gladdened with sunny skies
and smooth paths. Again the clouds would gather, and the rain, the
sleet, and the snow would envelop them in glooms truly dismal. Under
these circumstances the progress of the wagons was very slow. David was
impatient. As he watched the sluggish turns of the wheels, he thought
that he could travel very much faster if he should push forward alone,
leaving the wagons behind him.
At length he became so impatient, thoughts of home having obtained
entire possession of his mind, that he informed Mr. Dunn of his
intention to press forward as fast as he could. His elder companions
deemed it very imprudent for such a mere child, thus alone, to attempt
to traverse the wilderness, and they said all they could to dissuade
him, but in vain. He therefore, early the next morning, bade them
farewell, and with light footsteps and a light heart tripped forward,
leaving them behind, and accomplishing nearly as much in one day as the
wagons could in two. We are not furnished with any of the details of
this wonderful journey of a solitary child through a wilderness of one
or two hundred miles. We know not how he slept at night, or how he
obtained food by day. He informs us that he was at length overtaken by
a drover, who had been to Virginia with a herd of cattle, and was
returning to Knoxville riding one horse and leading another.
The man was amazed in meeting a mere child in such lonely wilds, and
upon hearing his story, his kind heart was touched. David was a frail
little fellow, whose weight would be no burden for a horse, and the
good man directed him to mount the animal which he led. The boy had
begun to be very tired. He was just approaching a turbid stream, whose
icy waters, reaching almost to his neck, he would have had to wade but
for this Providential assistance.
Travellers in the wilderness seldom trot their horses. On such a
journey, an animal who naturally walks fast is of much more value than
one which has attained high speed upon the race-course. Thus pleasantly
mounted, David and his kind protector rode along together until they
came within about fifteen miles of John Crockett's tavern, where their
roads diverged. Here David dismounted, and bidding adieu to his
benefactor, almost ran the remaining distance, reaching home that
evening.
"The name of this kind gentleman," he writes, "I have forgotten; for it
deserves a high place in my little book. A remembrance of his kindness
to a little straggling boy has, however, a resting-place in my heart,
and there it will remain as long as I live."
It was the spring of the year when David reached his father's cabin. He
spent a part of the summer there. The picture which David gives of his
home is revolting in the extreme. John Crockett, the tavern-keeper, had
become intemperate, and he was profane and brutal. But his son, never
having seen any home much better, does not seem to have been aware that
there were any different abodes upon earth. Of David's mother we know
nothing. She was probably a mere household drudge, crushed by an
unfeeling husband, without sufficient sensibilities to have been aware
of her degraded condition.
Several other cabins had risen in the vicinity of John Crockett's. A
man came along, by the name of Kitchen, who undertook to open a school
to teach the boys to read. David went to school four days, but found it
very difficult to master his letters. He was a wiry little fellow, very
athletic, and his nerves seemed made of steel. When roused by anger, he
was as fierce and reckless as a catamount. A boy, much larger than
himself, had offended him. David decided not to attack him near the
school-house, lest the master might separate them.
He therefore slipped out of school, just before it was dismissed, and
running along the road, hid in a thicket, near which his victim would
have to pass on his way home. As the boy came unsuspectingly along,
young Crockett, with the leap of a panther, sprang upon his back. With
tooth and nail he assailed him, biting, scratching, pounding, until the
boy cried for mercy.
The next morning, David was afraid to go to school, apprehending the
severe punishment he might get from the master. He therefore left home
as usual, but played truant, hiding himself in the woods all day. He
did the same the next morning, and so continued for several days. At
last the master sent word to John Crockett, inquiring why his son David
no longer came to school. The boy was called to an account, and the
whole affair came out.
John Crockett had been drinking. His eyes flashed fire. He cut a stout
hickory stick, and with oaths declared that he would give his boy an
"eternal sight" worse whipping than the master would give him, unless
he went directly back to school. As the drunken father approached
brandishing his stick, the boy ran, and in a direction opposite from
that of the school-house. The enraged father pursued, and the unnatural
race continued for nearly a mile. A slight turn in the road concealed
the boy for a moment from the view of his pursuer, and he plunged into
the forest and hid. The father, with staggering gait, rushed along, but
having lost sight of the boy, soon gave up the chase, and returned home.
This revolting spectacle, of such a father and such a son, over which
one would think that angels might weep, only excited the derision of
this strange boy. It was what he had been accustomed to all his life.
He describes it in ludicrous terms, with the slang phrases which were
ever dropping from his lips. David knew that a terrible whipping
awaited him should he go back to the cabin.
He therefore pushed on several miles, to the hut of a settler whom he
knew. He was, by this time, too much accustomed to the rough and tumble
of life to feel any anxiety about the future. Arriving at the cabin, it
so chanced that he found a man, by the name of Jesse Cheek, who was
just starting with a drove of cattle for Virginia. Very readily, David,
who had experience in that business, engaged to accompany him. An elder
brother also, either weary of his wretched home or anxious to see more
of the world, entered into the same service.
The incidents of this journey were essentially the same with those of
the preceding one, though the route led two hundred miles farther into
the heart of Virginia. The road they took passed through Abingdon,
Witheville, Lynchburg, Charlottesville, Orange Court House, to Front
Royal in Warren County. Though these frontier regions then,
seventy-five years ago, were in a very primitive condition, still young
Crockett caught glimpses of a somewhat higher civilization than he had
ever encountered before in his almost savage life.
Here the drove was sold, and David found himself with a few dollars in
his pocket. His brother decided to look for work in that region. David,
then thirteen years of age, hoping tremblingly that time enough had
elapsed to save him from a whipping, turned his thoughts homeward. A
brother of the drover was about to return on horseback. David decided
to accompany him, thinking that the man would permit him to ride a part
of the way.
Much to his disgust, the man preferred to ride himself. The horse was
his own. David had no claim to it whatever. He was therefore left to
trudge along on foot. Thus he journeyed for three days. He then made an
excuse for stopping a little while, leaving his companion to go on
alone. He was very careful not again to overtake him. The boy had then,
with four dollars in his pocket, a foot journey before him of between
three and four hundred miles. And this was to be taken through desolate
regions of morass and forest, where, not unfrequently, the lurking
Indian had tomahawked, or gangs of half-famished wolves had devoured
the passing traveller. He was also liable, at any time, to be caught by
night and storm, without any shelter.
As he was sauntering along slowly, that he might be sure and not
overtake his undesirable companion, he met a wagoner coming from
Greenville, in Tennessee, and bound for Gerardstown, Berkeley County,
in the extreme northerly part of Virginia. His route lay directly over
the road which David had traversed. The man's name was Adam Myers. He
was a jovial fellow, and at once won the heart of the vagrant boy.
David soon entered into a bargain with Myers, and turned back with him.
The state of mind in which the boy was may be inferred from the
following extract taken from his autobiography. I omit the profanity,
which was ever sprinkled through all his utterances:
"I often thought of home, and, indeed, wished bad enough to be there.
But when I thought of the school-house, and of Kitchen, my master, and
of the race with my father, and of the big hickory stick he carried,
and of the fierceness of the storm of wrath I had left him in, I was
afraid to venture back. I knew my father's nature so well, that I was
certain his anger would hang on to him like a turtle does to a
fisherman's toe. The promised whipping came slap down upon every
thought of home."
Travelling back with the wagon, after two days' journey, he met his
brother again, who had then decided to return himself to the parental
cabin in Tennessee. He pleaded hard with David to accompany him
reminding him of the love of his mother and his sisters. The boy,
though all unused to weeping, was moved to tears. But the thought of
the hickory stick, and of his father's brawny arm, decided the
question. With his friend Myers he pressed on, farther and farther from
home, to Gerardstown.