Produced by Donald Cummings, from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.
DAVID CROCKETT
SCOUT
[Illustration: DAVY HAD A CHANCE TO FIGHT THAT MUST HAVE SATISFIED HIM]
DAVID CROCKETT
SCOUT
SMALL BOY, PILGRIM, MOUNTAINEER,
SOLDIER, BEAR-HUNTER, AND CONGRESSMAN
DEFENDER OF THE ALAMO
BY
CHARLES FLETCHER ALLEN
_FRONTISPIECE BY_
FRANK McKERNAN
“The fittest place where man can die is where he dies for man”
――M. J. BARRY.
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
FIFTEENTH IMPRESSION
PRINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To
EDITH SQUIRE ALLEN
GUARDIAN, COMRADE, AND KINDLY LIGHT
PREFACE
The story of David Crockett stands apart from all others in our
history――a nebulous collection of traditions about a great array of
facts. To the unnumbered thousands to whom his name is familiar he is
often as unreal as the hero of a mediæval romance or of Scandinavian
mythology. This book will follow his history with close attention
to dates, and without recognition of the impossible legends of many
writers. To accomplish this has required much reading and research,
much weighing of evidence, and the help of others. The portrait of
David Crockett, now for the first time published, is after the original
in the Alamo, painted by the famous artist Chapman while Crockett was a
Congressman. It is a picture that reveals the secret of his success in
winning friends and fame.
For the use of the picture thanks are due to Mrs. Rebecca Fisher, of
Austin, Texas, the venerable President of the Daughters of the Republic
of Texas, and to Mrs. Marie B. Urwitz, the Chairman of the Executive
Committee of the same Society. For other favors acknowledgment is made
to Miss Jennie Moore, of Flag Pond, Tenn.; Prof. Eric Doolittle, of the
University of Pennsylvania; Judge W. T. Rogers, of Denver; Mr. and Mrs.
Mark F. Postlewaite, of San Antonio, Texas; and to Richard A. Paddock,
for much information in regard to Reelfoot Lake.
It is hoped that this unpretentious volume may help to a better
understanding of the life and motives of a man whose footsteps went
into no dark places, and who died an honor to his race and his
countrymen――a hero _sans peur et sans reproche_.
CHARLES FLETCHER ALLEN.
DENVER, COLORADO, June 2, 1911.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE YOUNG FRONTIERSMAN 13
II. THE START FOR VIRGINIA 26
III. DAVY TAKES TO THE WOODS 37
IV. THE INDIANS’ VISIT 50
V. DAVY IS A SCOUT 65
VI. FOLLOWING INDIANS 78
VII. HARD FIGHTING 90
VIII. BEAN’S CREEK 107
IX. A CABIN IN THE WILDERNESS 125
X. THE ELECTION 142
XI. EARTHQUAKES 156
XII. HUNTING BEARS 168
XIII. LOST IN THE WOODS 185
XIV. THE MISSISSIPPI FLOOD 194
XV. CLAY AND WEBSTER 204
XVI. IN CONGRESS 215
XVII. DAVY’S POPULARITY 225
XVIII. TRAVELLING HARD 241
XIX. THE RIFLE “BETSY” 253
XX. OFF FOR TEXAS 265
XXI. THE BEE-HUNTER 278
XXII. THE ALAMO BESIEGED 288
XXIII. THE MEXICANS’ CHARGE 300
David Crockett
I.
THE YOUNG FRONTIERSMAN
Birthplace in Tennessee――His Irish Blood――Summer-time in the Great
Smokies――The Indian signal fires――Little Davy gets fighting mad――His
love of weapons――In the Bald Mountains――Davy’s aspirations――John
Crockett moves again.
The antecedents of Davy Crockett are Irish, although his mother was
Rebecca Hawkins, a native of Maryland, and probably of English descent.
After the execution of King Charles I, in the seventeenth century, many
Irishmen were transported to North America as rebels, and there sold
into a state of slavery among the English colonists. Many of them were
sent to Virginia and to the Somers or Bermuda Islands, and in Sir J. H.
Lefroy’s “Memorials of Bermuda” occur the names of James Sheehan and
David Larragan as two of the slaves bought and sold in those islands.
As we might expect, the same records often make mention of the unruly
and riotous nature of the Irish rebels, and of the complaints of those
who thought the colony might well be rid of them. It was the blood of
the fighting race that told, and one by one the slaves became freemen,
to follow every bugle-call or rolling drum that has led into the storms
of shot and shell on our country’s battlefields.
David Crockett’s grandparents left Ireland for America after the birth
of William, their oldest son, and it is supposed that John Crockett,
another son, and the father of David, was born during the voyage. The
family, which eventually included four boys, settled in Pennsylvania.
Here John Crockett lived as a farmer for some time, removing while
still a young man to Lincoln County, North Carolina, and afterwards
to the Tennessee mountain country. His parents, displaying the same
restlessness that characterized the career of David, came into what is
now Hawkins County, Tennessee, and settled near the site of the present
town of Rogersville. It is not unlikely that the county took its name
from the family to which Rebecca Hawkins belonged.
The Creek Indians had now begun to feel the pressure of immigration
into their sacred hunting-grounds, and were at all times dangerous,
frequent encounters occurring between them and the settlers. Both
of Davy’s grandparents were killed during an Indian foray, near the
Holston River, in Hawkins County. In this bloody affair their son
Joseph had his arm broken by a bullet, though he finally escaped. His
brother James, who was deaf and dumb, remained a prisoner for more than
seventeen years. It was without doubt due to his being deaf and dumb
that he was finally heard of and identified by Davy’s father and uncle
William, who paid some sort of a ransom and obtained his freedom. He
lived for many years in Cumberland County, Kentucky.
Davy Crockett was the fifth of six sons, and there were three sisters,
besides, or nine children in all, in the family of John Crockett. In
his own story Davy makes little use of the names of his relatives,
and although some of them are known, they are not material to this
narrative.
Davy Crockett was born on the 17th of August, 1786. At this time, the
“Gateses, Lees, and rough Yankee Generals,” as Carlyle styled them, had
returned to their own shores, and were striving to form a permanent
union of the States. The courts of the Old World were vying with each
other in extravagance and riotous living.
But the Great Smoky Mountains were full of peace, and from the Unaka
range to the far blue crest of the Cumberlands the troubles of the
far-off world were but echoes faintly heard. The new and short-lived
State of Franklin was a year old, and John Crockett, veteran of the
Revolution, was content to work there from dawn till dark, that his
children might be fed and housed. The mountains were full of game, corn
could be raised when the ground was cleared, and the autumn yielded
bountiful stores of nuts, wild grapes, berries, and apples, until from
one source or another the cabin was filled with winter supplies; yet
somehow there always seemed to be insufficient for the long months
before the anemones and azaleas came again beside the leaping brooks or
under the tender green of the wakening trees.
The log cabin of the Crockett family stood where the Limestone Creek
joined the Nolichucky River, ten miles north of the great bend in the
Bald Mountain range. There the rocky summits, angling abruptly about
the watersheds of Indian Creek, are like fortifications of the Titans,
crowned with battlements of the Appalachian range, whose peaks stand
more than six thousand feet above the sea――higher than any others east
of the Mississippi. From the rocky escarpments, between the black
forests of pine and hemlock, shone the signal-fires of the Creek
and Chickasaw, and from unseen nooks between their giant flanks the
thump-thump-thump of the tom-tom caused the pioneer to look to his
stockades and his flintlock guns.
The fierce ebb and flow of war that had given Kentucky the name of
“the Dark and Bloody Ground” had now and then swept over parts of
Tennessee――the massacre at Fort Loudon was a red spot upon the pages
of her history; but the rivalries of the English, French, and Spanish
had promoted Indian raids in the disputable regions of the Ohio and the
Mississippi, rather than in the lowlands of the western part of this
state and in the Alabama plains. What Tennessee was spared in earlier
days she knew in the Civil War in 1861 to 1865, when from Knoxville to
Donelson and Shiloh, and from Lookout Mountain to the Cumberland Gap,
her fields were filled with unknown graves and the wreck and misery of
a terrible conflict.
It was not until many years after the birth of Crockett that it became
safe to travel the rugged roads between Virginia and North Carolina and
the Nashville country. In the twenty or more trips that Andrew Jackson
made between Jonesboro and Nashville in the days when he was foremost
in the practice of the law, he had many a close call in Indian fights.
More than a score of times he came upon the bodies of men, women, and
children, robbed and slain and scalped. Little Davy, listening at
nightfall beside the river, hearing above its murmur the hoot of the
owl in the dismal trees, the howl of the wolf on the mountain-top,
or the panther’s anguished cry, floating out of the vague unknown,
would make good use of his sturdy little legs until he was safe at his
mother’s side.
As the boy grew older, he lost the instinctive sense of fear that was
perhaps a part of his natural heritage; for the cry of the Banshee
had filled the souls of his Irish forebears with terror in their
lowly cabins across the seas. Something of the daring of Sir John
and of Richard his son, of the Hawkins kin――slavers, freebooters,
sea-scourges, admirals――had come to him on his mother’s side, and
now, too, the fighting blood of his father’s race began to show. Davy
was scarce six years old when four of his brothers, and a boy named
Campbell, left him on the shore of the Nolichucky while they put out
into the river in the rude boat that was used in crossing the stream.
Had it not been for the bravery of a man named Kendall, who saw their
danger, the five boys would surely have gone over the falls a little
way below, which would have meant certain death. Davy seems partly to
have realized their danger, but said he was too fighting mad at being
left behind to care what happened to them. When they were safe again,
his greatest satisfaction was in telling them that the scrape they had
been in was what they had earned for not taking him along.
Like every boy of the frontier, Davy was quick to idealize the great
flintlock rifles, powder-horns, and other implements of the hunter. He
loved to watch his father mould bullets from the well-nigh priceless
supply of lead, or cut and grease “patches” for loading. The boy would
sometimes shoulder a stick and imagine himself a hunter, stimulated
perhaps by the loan of a powder-horn and a hunting-knife. All this was
evidence of what was working in his mind.
An old man who knew the boy and always called him the “Corkonian” said
that “the only diff’ betwane a crowbar and a gun is thot the gun do
have a hole in it, and a stock.” The hunter’s rifle was made from a bar
of iron weighing about the same as a crowbar, from eleven to fifteen
pounds being the usual weight of the gun. From this it is easy to see
that the small boy of 1795 could not take a very active part in the
hunting that furnished the greater portion of the supply of food for
the pioneer and his family.
In talking with General Grant, who had suggested a way in which the
reserves might be of use while not needed at the front, Abraham Lincoln
once said: “Oh, yes; I see that. As we say out West, if a man can’t
skin he can hold a leg for the one that does.” A five-year-old boy
might not be able to hunt and kill deer, but he could “hold a leg.” The
boy of to-day can go forth with a four-pound “twenty-two” with less
fatigue than his grandfather felt in handling a rifle when ten years
older. At the age of fifteen a boy might learn to shoot, but he was
hardly able to range the mountains for game.
It was on a day in August, when Davy was six years old, that his father
and his uncle took him with them on a hunting trip into the dark
forests of pine on the northern slopes of the Bald Mountains. They were
gone but a single day, but every moment was a revelation to the little
fellow. They were looking for wild turkeys, and had bagged several
when they came to an opening surrounded by maples, beeches, and other
deciduous trees. The grass was fresh, and a dozen sorts of flowers were
under their feet as they tied their single horse, on which Davy rode
with the game.
The men were talking of the West, and as they pointed out across the
peaceful land of the Chickasaws, the boy heard often the names of the
great rivers, the Tennessee, the Holston, the Cumberland, the Ohio,
and the Mississippi. The spirit of unrest that was in their hearts was
already in his own, and from that day the Nolichucky was no longer
satisfying to him; he wanted something bigger.
In the faint echoes of ringing steel and bloody threats that came from
the cities of the Old World, those August days, there was somewhat
that excited the natural restlessness of the pioneer. The events in
France were terrible and momentous. On the 20th of the month before,
the “black-browed Marseillaise,” the Reds of the Midi, had finished
their long march from the shores of the Mediterranean, and had entered
Paris, six hundred strong, armed with forks and scythes and pikes, and
singing the song of Rouget de Lisle that forever afterwards was to be
the War Hymn of Unrest. The few who had left for the New World had not
been missed in the ranks of the starving people of Europe’s overcrowded
streets and lands. The “black chaos of insurrection” had burst upon the
last defenses of the French king, and it may have been while the three
looked westward to the promised land that the Swiss Guards――hunted like
wild beasts――died to the last man in the Place de Grêve. The time for
blood-letting had come to France, and the whole world was in a ferment
that was soon to set the red men of America in battle against the
aggressions of the colonists. There could never have been peace in the
Old World until the opening of the New, and that also meant war to the
knife.
From then until he went forth into the strange places of the east, Davy
grew in thought and stature and in the knowledge of common things, but
without any education other than that obtained by the use of sharp ears
and keen sight. When he was seven or more, the whole Crockett family
moved to a place about ten miles north of Greenville. From the habit
John Crockett had, of going from one place to another, it seems that
he depended mostly upon game and pelts for a living. He could not have
been much of a farmer, in a country where land had to be cleared before
crops could be raised.
It was while in Greene County that Joseph Hawkins, brother of Davy’s
mother, shot a man while hunting, having mistaken him for a deer. The
man was gathering wild grapes, and as he reached for the clusters above
him, Hawkins thought he saw the moving ears of a deer. As all kinds
of game were common in such a place, and hunters were scarce, he took
a careful aim, and shot the grape-gatherer through the chest. The man
finally recovered from the effects of the wound, but Davy tells that
he saw his father draw a silk handkerchief through the bullet-hole and
through the man’s body. Such accidents were less frequent in those
days, when the human target might be one of a party of Indians skulking
in the thickets. In such a case the hunter would be tomahawked and
scalped before he could reload――or bound fast, and he might be tortured
to death later.
A Chicago paper obtained a list of one hundred and thirteen men who
were killed in the year 1910, through such mistakes and careless
handling of guns. In war, the killed are far less in number than the
wounded, but in 1910 only eighty-seven were wounded as against one
hundred and thirteen killed. This shows that the hunters who do the
killing are much more careful in their aim than in finding out what
they have for a target. It is a pretty sure thing that the immediate
scalping of such blunderers would save one hundred lives every year.
Davy Crockett’s father used to tell him, when he began to use a rifle,
“Look mighty hard before you shoot: it may be a man you see, but you
can always get a man.”
From Greene County John Crockett moved, after a year or so, to the
mouth of Cove Creek, some twenty-five miles below the mouth of the
Limestone.
II.
THE START FOR VIRGINIA
The mill on Cove Creek――Swept away, “lock, stock, and barrel”――The
Crockett family keeps moving――Andrew Jackson and the corn-thief――“A
boy’ll be after trouble before his ears are dry”――The empty
cupboard――’Lasses-b’ilin’s, bean-stringin’s, butter-stirrin’s――Bobtail
pigs and bawling calves――Davy is sent to Virginia on foot with Jacob
Siler――He gets homesick, and longs to see his family――Good friends come
to his aid, and he returns home.
It would appear that John Crockett had some funds upon moving to Cove
Creek, for he at once began the building of a mill, in partnership with
a man named Galbreath. They had about finished the mill――undoubtedly a
primitive affair――when trouble came.
Over all the flanks and summits of the Appalachian range the snow
lay deep in the shelter of the pines. It was the accumulation of the
long winter, compact, and covered with a glaze of ice. All through
the winter the creek on which the mill was built flowed quietly in
its course, held in check by the icy rein of the zero weather. But
the stream grew deeper and swifter as the days advanced, and when
the swamp-apple and the wild cherry were like woodland fairies in
their robes of tender pink and creamy white, when the rumble of the
partridge’s wings was heard and the violets were scarfs of blue flung
here and there, the south wind swept along the range with lowering
clouds, the heavens were opened, and the rain began. In “the twinkling
of an eye” the stream they had relied upon to run their mill swept
every vestige of their labor out of sight, “lock, stock, and barrel,”
as Crockett described the disaster.
Few men care to build upon the scene of ruined hopes, and John Crockett
moved on again. We follow him next to a place on the road that was
frequented by travellers between Virginia and Nashville. Here he kept
an inn for the wayfarer――a poor kind of an affair, where only such
people as wagoners were likely to halt. They were as rough as the
roads over which they came, and in feeding such guests there was small
profit. The Western settlers were always ready to take arms against
any authority that held too tight a rein, and each man was as quick
to show fight in his own behalf. In his later years, David Crockett
remembered the little tavern between Jonesboro and Knoxville as a place
of “hard times, and plenty of ’em.”
It was there that Davy first saw Andrew Jackson, who was afterwards
his leader in the Creek War of 1813. Already the renown of the State’s
Attorney had become a household subject in Tennessee. Jackson feared no
man, and brought to justice the most defiant of the mountaineers. The
men of that day had a habit of settling their differences out of court,
which caused many to die “with their boots on.” Much the same system
even now prevails in some parts of Kentucky and Tennessee. To those
who have deplored the passionate natures and the crimes of the foreign
element in our country, it may be said that the most lawless and cruel
of our citizens are primitive Americans, the feudists of the Dark and
Bloody Ground and the Big Bend State. The reason why Jackson had most
of the court cases in those days was because they were criminal suits,
and to him, as public prosecutor, came the duty of conducting them.
One day there stopped at the Crockett tavern a man from the head of
the Limestone, who had come down the Nolichucky with a load of corn
that he had stolen from a neighbor. Of this he openly boasted, and he
defied any one to interfere with him. John Crockett told him he did not
care to take stolen corn as payment for feeding him and his horses, and
asked him to go; but the unwelcome guest said he should stay as long as
he liked. The next day, towards dark, appeared a number of horsemen,
who had been belated by a storm in the mountains. Among them was Andrew
Jackson, and there were also two or three constables and prisoners on
the way to Knoxville. Then in his twenty-seventh year, Jackson was an
ideal leader of men. More than six feet tall, slender but muscular, the
glance of his dark blue eyes meant more than verbal threats. To him,
John Crockett told the story of the vainglorious thief. Jackson told
the man that he was under arrest, whereupon the latter at once became
violent and threatening.
The room of the tavern in which the wagoners spent the spare hours was
large and dingy, built of logs, and had been the scene of more than one
desperate quarrel. There were enough bullet-holes in the logs to prove
it.
Jackson whispered to a constable, and under the directions of the
latter every one left the room except Jackson and the thief. Ten
minutes afterwards the latter came out of the room, without his rifle
or knife, and sullenly left the place. The horses and the wagon-load of
corn were left behind, and were afterwards turned over to the man from
whom they had been stolen. Davy, who was a lad of eight or nine years
at the time, had been terrified by the threats of the corn-thief, and
always wondered at the quiet way in which Andrew Jackson had disposed
of him.
The small boy’s days are short, but full of zest. Having as yet no
conscience, or at least a dormant one, he feels no regrets for his
misdeeds, but sleeps the sleep of the just, and wakes with all his
faculties for mischief whetted. Where “two or three are gathered
together,” there is always danger in the air. Davy had brothers whose
experiences gave him a good start, and he “profited by their example.”
Up to the age of five, when he danced with rage on the banks of the
shore where he had been left alone, he tells us that he never had worn
any breeches. From this we infer that as he was easy to overhaul in
flight, and was without any protection from the usual application of
punishment, he had to grow and be clothed before he became a serious
source of trouble. An Irishman fresh from the Old Sod will tell you
that “a boy’ll be after huntin’ trouble before his ears are dry.” And
once started, he never quits.
In Davy’s time there were no jam closets for him to rob, for the
cupboard was always empty, except for the great loaves of bread that
were baked from corn and rye. Everything being devoured as fast as
it was cooked, none of the boy’s time was taken up with watching
the pantry, and his time was his own. If there happened to be such
neighborhood events as corn-huskin’s, ’lasses-b’ilin’s, log-rollin’s,
bean-stringin’s, or butter-stirrin’s, which still prevail in the
mountains, there was a respite for his victims. Upon one occasion,
when his parents had gone to a corn-husking, Davy and one of his
brothers, with another boy, rounded up all the hogs that were fattening
on beech-nuts in the woods, penned them up, cut off their tails, and
let them go. It was some weeks later when their villainy was detected.
They were forced to confess that they were guilty, and that the tails
had been roasted in hot ashes and eaten. Such mild pastimes as robbing
birds’ nests were diversified by practical jokes on the travelling
public, and many a beating fell to the lot of the Crockett boys. One
of the tricks they played was to take the calves away from their
bovine mothers after dark. This meant all-night bawling, and human
wakefulness, until the cows were united with the lost offspring. If
Elisha had lived in the Tennessee mountains, the bears would have been
busy all the time.
When Davy was twelve, in 1798, he had become a strong and useful lad,
with a fully developed conscience. The wishes of his parents were the
only law he had known, and when at last the time came when his father
said to him, as Saul to him of old, “David, go, and the Lord be with
thee,” he went forth as a pilgrim. It is not certain with what words he
was sent forth, but he seems to have made no appeal from the bargain
that sent him four hundred miles over the mountains, on foot, in the
keeping of a stranger. Perhaps he had come to know that his father
found it hard to feed so many mouths. At any rate, he took up the long
march with an old German, Jacob Siler, who was bound to Virginia with
a herd of cattle, where he proposed to remain. How many have read with
sympathy and keen appreciation Davy’s simple story of his departure
“with a heavy heart,” perhaps never to return!
Siler treated the boy kindly, and paid him five or six dollars for his
help. When he reached the end of his journey, he tried to persuade
Davy to stay with him. At first Davy thought it his father’s wish that
he should remain, so for some weeks he tried to be content; but the
yearning to see his family again was strong within him. One day, as he
was playing in the road, there came along three familiar faces, those
of a man named Dunn and two sons, each with a good team. The sight of
them was like a sight of home, for they were bound to Knoxville, and
the way led past the lowly Crockett inn, and Davy was soon telling his
plight to sympathetic listeners. As his disappearance in the daytime
would soon be known and might result in his being brought back, they
told him that if he could get to the place where they were to put up
for the night, seven miles away, they would take him home. All the
tiresome journey there, Davy had come on foot, and at the prospect of
riding all the way back, heaven opened before him.
To his delight, he found that the “good old Dutchman and his family”
had gone to a neighbor’s. Davy’s own story of what followed is this:
“I gathered my clothes and what little money I had, and put them all
together under the head of my bed. I went to bed early that night, but
I could not sleep. For though I was a wild boy, yet I dearly loved my
father and mother, and I could not sleep for thinking of them. And
then the fear that I should be discovered and called to a halt filled
me with anxiety: and between my childish love of home, on the one
hand, and the fears of which I have spoken, on the other, I felt mighty
queer.”
It was three hours before daylight when Davy crawled out of his bed. He
got away from the house without waking any one, and found it snowing
hard, eight inches having already fallen. In the absence of moonlight,
it was a difficult matter to reach the main highway, half a mile off;
but once in that, he steered his way towards the place appointed,
guided by the opening made through the woods. He was two hours trudging
through snow up to his knees, and as his tracks were covered as
fast as they were made, the Siler family must have wondered at his
disappearance.
Davy found the Dunns up and feeding their teams, and was kindly
received. As he warmed himself by the fire, he forgot his struggle with
the storm in his thankfulness for their goodness and help. As soon as
breakfast was over, the wagoners set out, and the boy found himself
counting the seemingly endless miles of the homeward journey. When they
reached the Roanoke valley, his desire to get home was too great for
him to endure the slow progress of the loaded wagons. He could travel
twice as fast afoot, so at the house of John Cole, on the Roanoke, he
thanked his kind friends for what they had done for him, and started
out alone on what must have been a tramp of three hundred miles.
He was near the first crossing of the river in a few hours, and dreaded
it, as he would have to wade or swim to the other side, in water that
was very cold. Then he heard the clatter of horses’ feet behind him,
and a cheery hail from a man who was returning from where he had sold
some stock. He had an extra horse, saddled and bridled, and as he had
also a soft spot in his heart for boys, in a moment Davy was mounted,
as proud as a king. In this way he travelled until within fifteen miles
of home, when he went his way on foot, full of gratitude towards the
stranger for his goodness towards a “poor little straggling boy.”
III.
DAVY TAKES TO THE WOODS
Davy is welcomed home――A school-house in the mountains――He makes
an enemy――Wildcat style of fighting――Davy takes to the woods――John
Crockett cuts a stout hickory switch――Davy is off for Virginia
again――He goes to Baltimore――The clippers and the privateer――Prevented
from sailing for London――He leaves his self-appointed guardian and
starts for home――He crosses New River through slush ice――The trail in
spring――A strange boy at the family table――“It’s Davy come home!”
Davy reached his father’s inn the same night, and his welcome may be
imagined. It was late in the fall, and he lived at home until the red
flames of the sumac and the poison oak were again fiery spots and
streaks upon the hills. Then John Crockett took it into his head to
send the boy to a school near-by. A rude log cabin, with benches hewn
from logs and a floor of earth, offered its single room to those who
came. A great slab of wood, three feet wide, and standing on hickory
stakes, reached across the room, and was used as a table for the
scholars. “Readin’, spellin’ an’ cipherin’” were the principal studies.
Writing, of course, was taught, but the quill pens and poor ink they
had to use were as hard to get as was paper, and the blackboard seldom
made a penman of an awkward lad.
On the fourth day Davy spent in school he had an altercation with a boy
larger and older than he. When the children were dismissed, Davy hid in
the bushes and waited for his enemy. As the boy was passing the ambush,
Davy “set on him like a wildcat, scratched his face to a flitter-jig,
and made him cry for quarter in good earnest.”
Young Crockett was now in a bad fix, for he knew there was a flogging
in store for him. The next day, and for several days, he left home in
the morning, ostensibly for school, but spent the time in the woods,
until the children went home. His brothers attended the same school,
but he had persuaded them to say nothing of his “playing hooky.”
When the schoolmaster wrote to John Crockett, telling him of Davy’s
absence, the whole story came out.
“I was in an awful hobble,” Davy wrote of this, “for my father was in
a condition to make the fur fly. He called on me to tell why I had not
been to school. I told him that I was afraid to go, for I knew I should
be cooked up to a cracklin’ in no time. My father told me, in a very
angry manner, that he would whip me an eternal sight worse if I didn’t
start at once to school.”
While Davy was begging not to be sent back, the elder Crockett was
cutting a stout hickory switch, and from past experience the boy knew
what this meant. At his father’s first move towards him, he broke into
a run. The chase lasted a mile, when the boy dodged aside into the
bushes, and his father then gave up the hunt. Davy had been careful to
lead off in a course away from the school-house, having a keen idea of
his fate if both the teacher and his father should get him at the same
time.
Fearing to return, Davy kept on for several miles and put up for the
night at the house of a man who was about to start for Virginia with
a drove of cattle. The boy at once hired out to go with him, and
before starting one of the older Crockett boys joined them. Thus was
Davy again a pilgrim, with a journey of nearly four hundred miles
before him. The trail they followed was probably about the same as the
route of the Norfolk & Western Railroad of the present time, through
Abingdon, Wytheville, and Blue Ridge Springs, to Lynchburg, passing
south of Hanging Rock, to which place Davy had travelled the previous
year. From Lynchburg the drove went on to Charlottesville and Orange
Court House, up the headwaters of the Rapidan, again through the Blue
Ridge Mountains, to Front Royal, on the Shenandoah River, where the
stock was sold.
Davy and a brother of the man with whom he had started out, with a
single horse for the two, now took the homeward trail. They were
together three days, travelling with so little rest that the boy
finally told the man to go ahead, and that he would come when he got
ready. He bought some provisions with four dollars that the man had
given him for the four hundred miles’ journey, and plodded stolidly
along until he met a wagoner who lived in Tennessee, and who intended
to return after his trip was finished. He was bound for Winchester,
not very far away, and as he was a jolly sort of fellow, Davy gladly
accepted his offer to take him along. Two days later they met Davy’s
brother and the rest of the former party, but Davy refused to go with
them. He says that he could not help shedding tears, as he watched his
brother disappear, but the thought of the schoolmaster, and of his
angry father with the big hickory switch, was too potent.
At Gerardstown, Virginia, Davy worked for twenty-five cents a day for
a man named John Gray. Adam Myers, the wagoner, was engaged all winter
in hauling loads to and from Baltimore. When spring came, Davy had
money to buy decent clothes, and something like seven dollars besides.
He took it into his head that he would go with Myers to Baltimore, to
see what kind of place it was, and how people lived there. This came
near being Davy’s last trip, for on reaching Ellicott’s Mills he had
perched himself on top of the barrels of flour that made the load, when
the horses ran away at the sight of a road gang with wheelbarrows. The
frightened animals turned short about, snapped the pole and then both
axle-trees, and nearly buried the boy in the falling barrels. Escaping
with nothing more serious than bruises, the two went on with a hired
wagon, and soon arrived in Baltimore.
At this place Davy Crockett nearly became a sailor. The harbor was full
of shipping, gay with flags and the glories of fresh paint, loading and
discharging the riches of all nations. There were never such ships as
the Baltimore clippers. Their memory lives in the hearts of every true
sailor――
The _Flying Cloud_ and the _Cockatoo_,
The _Southern Cross_, the _Caribou_,
The _Polar Bear_ and the _Northern Chief_,
The _Yankee Blade_ and the _Maple Leaf_.
The names of the vessels in the good old clipper times were those that
set a boy’s heart to thumping, and the sight of a great full-rigged
ship sweeping out to sea was enough to make sailors of farmers’ sons.
It was the spring of 1800, and in the port there was a vessel flying
the English flag, and then called the _Polly_. As much of Davy’s time
as possible was spent on the wharves, and finally he took courage and
went on board a vessel about to clear for London. She was a Yankee
ship, for in those days every vessel that flew the Stars and Stripes,
from Eastport to Savannah, was a Yankee. Seeing the boy gazing about
the decks and aloft, one of her men began talking with him. The
_Polly_ being at a wharf near-by, it was not long before Davy heard
the history of the old privateer, which had sailed from Baltimore in
1778, and before her return in November had fought with and captured
three British armed merchantmen: the _Reindeer_, four hundred tons
and fourteen guns, with a cargo worth one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars; the _Uhla_, of same tonnage and ten guns, and a hundred
thousand dollar cargo; and the _Jane_, of the tonnage and armament
of the _Reindeer_, and with a cargo also worth one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. One-third of all this treasure was the share of the
Government. Before the _Polly_ was unlawfully seized in a neutral port
and handed over to the English, she had captured nearly thirty prizes,
in many cases fighting desperate battles for the mastery.
The master of the ship either took a fancy to Davy or thought that
he might prove useful, for before the boy’s second day in Baltimore
had passed, he had arranged to go to London as cabin-boy. But when he
returned for what spare clothes he had on shore, and told Myers of his
intent, the latter refused to give him either his money or clothing,
and swore that he should not go. He kept watch over him, prevented
his going to the ship, and started back with him as soon as ready,
giving him no chance to escape. As he had become very harsh with Davy,
threatening him with his whip, the boy left him one morning before
daylight. Davy had not a cent in his pockets, but he resolved to go
ahead and trust to Providence. This trait was the prominent feature of
David Crockett’s nature: he made up his mind, and went ahead; it was
hard to turn him, and he went at everything “hammer and tongs.”
As the historian contemplates the spectacle of this penniless
thirteen-year-old youngster bravely facing towards his home, four
or five hundred miles away, it is but natural to wonder what would
have become of him if he had sailed for London. He might have become
a famous sailor, a reckless privateer, or a merchant with ships in
every sea. Up to this time Davy had had no schooling, except the four
days at the place to which he had been afraid to return. Many a boy
of the present time is graduated from a high school at fourteen, but
Davy Crockett did not know a single letter of the alphabet. As it
was, however, the Fates had no idea of sending him to sea, and while
the great ship was beating her way along the Atlantic coast, he was
resolutely facing west.
It was more than a year and a half before Davy was destined to see
his home again. Working for two or three employers, after reaching
Montgomery Court House, he saved up a little money and finally made
another start for Tennessee. For eighteen months he had worked for
a hatter who failed before paying his wages, and it was a poor and
half-clothed stripling that was now returning, with a better record,
but in no better luck, than the Prodigal Son. At the crossing of the
New River, only forty miles on the old trail he was now retracing, he
found high water and stormy weather. No one would row him across, and
in his impatience he disregarded all warnings, hired a canoe, and put
out into the stream. He finally reached the other side, the boat half
full of water, and his clothing soaking wet and freezing upon his back.
After going up the river for three miles, he found a warm shelter and
food.
As Davy finally went down the old road into the Tennessee valleys, the
woods were full of wakening life. The tender green of the beech and
maple shimmered on every slope. Beside his path the arbutus showed its
pink-white petals, and the azaleas and June-berries, full of bloom,
were eagerly sought by droning bees. The spring wind sang in every
pine, and the breath of the hemlock and the balsam was like a rare
perfume to the homesick boy.
In Sullivan County he encountered the brother who had in vain begged
him to return home. Perhaps Davy still dreaded the sight of the old
school-house, for it was some weeks before he left this brother’s cabin
and sought his father’s. He had travelled all day, and as he drew near
to the wayside inn he saw the teamsters caring for their horses and
covering the wagons for the night. He noticed that the poles of some
of the wagons pointed eastward, while the others showed that the loads
were on the westward journey. The latter were the ones that looked good
to Davy, who had had enough of wandering in the East.
His heart seemed in his throat as he saw his sisters and brothers going
in and out, and he feared at any moment to see his father with the
seasoned hickory, or perhaps old Kitchen, the schoolmaster, looming
over him like an inexorable fate. He hung about unseen until the jangle
of a horse-shoe and a poker called all hands to supper. When they were
plying knife and fork, he slipped in and took a seat quietly at the
long table. A great pewter platter was heaped with chunks of boiled
meat; another was filled with corn on the ear, and still another with
potatoes with their jackets on. Bowls of gravy, and bread, broken into
pieces as the loaves went round, completed the bill of fare. White
bread was hardly known in the mountains, corn and rye, or “rye and
Indian,” seeming to answer every demand of the wayfarer. In those times
some taverns had _menus_ to suit the purse and fastidiousness of the
traveller. For “Corn-bread and common doin’s” the charge was fifteen
cents, but for “White bread and chicken fixin’s” the bill was two bits,
or twenty-five cents.
Davy tackled the platters as they went the rounds, but in spite of
his hunger, he was conscious that there were sharp eyes awake to the
fact that a strange boy was at the table. His eldest sister had ceased
eating in the intentness of her gaze. He was so much larger than when
he had left home, that she was full of doubt, but at last, as her
eyes met Davy’s squarely, and his face became red with blushing, she
sprang from her seat at the table, and screaming, “It’s Davy! It’s
Davy, Mother! It’s Davy come back!” she threw her arms about his neck,
clinging to him with tears of joy running down her face. This was his
restoration to those who loved him, and whose reception of the wanderer
so touched his boyish heart that he humbled himself before them, no
longer fearing that they had forgotten him during the long and weary
time he had spent away from them.
Davy was now a strong and healthy youngster almost fifteen years old,
with much worldly wisdom, but unable to read or write.
IV.
THE INDIANS’ VISIT
Davy pays his father’s debts――The old man’s tears――Gets a suit of
clothes――Calf love――Barks up the wrong tree――Finds another girl――Sweet
plugs and snuff as evidences of affection――He is gaily deceived, and
wants to die――Pretty Polly Finlay――Davy marries at last――Other events
of the times――Moves to Lincoln County in 1809――Another move――Red Eagle
and the Creeks――Three hungry braves――Tecumseh and Big Warrior――The
Earthquakes of 1811.
The next year of Davy’s life was one of hard work and no pay. He had
been at home but a short time when his father told him that if he would
work for six months for a man named Abraham Wilson, Wilson would in
return give up a note of John Crockett’s for thirty-six dollars. As
a reward, Davy could thereafter work for himself, without waiting to
become of age. The boy fulfilled the compact without missing a day, in
a place where some of the roughest of the settlers made a practice of
meeting to drink and gamble. At last the note was his, and the joy of
his father at its surrender was Davy’s recompense.
It was always a satisfaction to Davy Crockett to know that his father
was a man who honestly tried to pay his debts. The son appears to have
had the same spirit. When he asked to be given work at the home of “an
honest old Quaker, John Kennedy,” he found that the man held another
note of his father for forty dollars. Davy was offered the note for
another six months’ work, and with a keen desire to do his duty, and to
ease his father’s burdens as much as he could, he disregarded his newly
acquired right to work for his own account, and started in. At the end
of the time he received the note, borrowed a horse, and went home for a
visit.
“Some time after I got there,” Davy afterwards said, “I pulled out the
note and handed it to my father, who supposed Mr. Kennedy had sent it
for collection. The old man looked mighty sorry, and said to me that he
had not the money to pay it, and didn’t know what he should do. I then
told him I had paid it for him, and it was then his own; that it was
not presented for collection, but as a present from me. At this he shed
a heap of tears; and as soon as he got a little over it, he said he was
sorry he could not give me anything, but he was not able, he was too
poor.”
For two months, after going back to the Quaker’s, Davy worked to get
something decent to wear. The last good clothing he owned had been
left with Adam Myers, together with his seven dollars of hard-earned
cash, when he had quit that troublesome person, a few days out from
Baltimore. This was nearly three years ago, so it is easy to imagine
the boy’s shabby appearance. About the time when Davy was able to
spruce up and aspire to polite society of the kind about him, he fell
in love with the Quaker’s niece, who had come on a visit from North
Carolina, and who was much older than he. All the symptoms of what the
mountaineers called “calf love” were forthcoming. He couldn’t keep out
of the girl’s sight, yet nearly choked when he tried to talk to her.
When he had reached the proper state of desperation, he acted with
his usual headlong energy, and told the young lady that he would die
without her. He says that the girl listened kindly enough, but told him
that she was to marry a son of the Quaker.
Davy concluded that his troubles were mostly due to his lack of
learning. He was now in his seventeenth year, with a record of four
days at school. He soon arranged with the old Quaker’s son, who kept
a school a mile or so away, to work for him two days in the week, for
board and tuition, and go to school the other four days. This plan was
followed for six months.
“In this time,” says Davy, in his later account of his boyhood, “I
learned to read a little in my primer, to write my own name, and to
cipher some in the first three rules of figures. And this was all the
schooling I ever had in my life.”
Davy had now grown to be a stout young fellow, and as he had learned
to use a rifle with great accuracy he became a successful hunter. This
was to a great extent a warrant for his plans for securing a wife, and
he laid siege to the heart of a pretty young girl whom he had known
since his early days. His courting was done without the knowledge of
the Quaker, with whom he was now living. In the evening, when all were
asleep, Davy would let himself out of the up-stairs window, by means
of a sapling, and ride ten miles to the girl’s home, always returning
before daylight. She at last agreed to marry him, and the day was set.
Lovers were not then given to sentimental tokens of affection. A
plug of sweet tobacco, or a bladder of snuff, for dipping, was quite
the thing to show the state of a young man’s feelings. Flowers were
nothing but “yarbs,” and the present of a bouquet of may-flowers
or laurel-blossoms would have caused inquiry as to his sanity. The
mountaineer took no more notice than the Indians of the beautiful
things in nature.
A few days before the expected wedding, Davy set out, as he told his
employer, for a hunt, deer being then numerous. Instead of hunting,
he went to a shooting-match on the way to the girl’s home. Making a
deal with another rifleman, who must have had a little money, they
took chances in the shoot for a beef, and when it was over, Davy had
won. After selling the prize, the partners each had five dollars, and
with that in his pocket, and his head above the clouds, the boy went
to claim his bride. Two miles from the girl’s home her uncle lived,
and there he found her sister. As soon as he began to talk with her,
he saw that something troubled her, and then the whole pitiful story
came out: the girl had played with him, and was to be married the next
day to another man. For a time Davy was speechless. His pride was
hurt, and he turned homeward his “lonesome and miserable steps,” like
a wounded animal, stricken with mortal pain. He was thought to be sick
for several weeks, for he was too proud to tell his trouble, and in
his story of suffering there is ample evidence of the strength of his
attachment to those whom he loved.
For some time Davy was too low-spirited to care for anything, even
hunting; but one day he took his rifle and set out for the woods. On
his way home, he stopped at the cabin of a Dutch widow, whose daughter,
he says, was “as ugly as a stone fence.” It was this girl, however, who
pointed out to him how great a mistake he made in “mourning over the
loss of a single fish, when the sea was full of others as good.” She
told him of a pretty Irish lass who was to be at a reaping bee in a
few days, and induced him to come, too. By the end of the evening the
charms of Polly Finlay took possession of his thoughts and Davy found
life more worth living. As in so many cases, the course of true love
did not run smooth, for the girl’s mother had selected another suitor
for her daughter, and she bitterly opposed Davy’s suit.
After some weeks of courting, Davy won the girl’s heart, but when
he went to ask for his bride, the old lady ordered him out of the
house. With the girl’s consent and the tacit permission of her father,
the young man secured the services of a justice to marry him on the
following Thursday, and made arrangements to have his wife received at
the tavern kept by his own father. In Ellis’s story of Crockett’s life,
he quotes the following from the records of Weakley County, Tennessee: