mile and a half in cold water up to their shoulders. Reaching the high
land and yellow pine timber, they were drying themselves when their
spies came “leaping the brush like so many old bucks,” with the news
that they had found a hostile Creek camp. After the braves and Major
Russell had been suitably decorated with war-paint they set out for
the place, but before they reached it, two of their Choctaw scouts
treacherously killed two Creeks whom they had met. The fight was thus
prevented, as the firing alarmed the Creek camp, and the hostiles made
good their escape. Davy’s party found that the scouts had already cut
off the heads of the Creeks, and each warrior in turn walked up to the
heads and struck them with a war-club. Davy says that after he had done
this, the Choctaws danced about him, struck him on his shoulders, and
called him “Warrior! Warrior!”
Soon after this they found a Spaniard and his wife and four children
killed and scalped, and Davy says the sight made him feel “ticklish.”
After scouting about between the Escambia and the Choctawhatchee,
the regiment divided, a part going to Baton Rouge, where they joined
Jackson on his way to New Orleans. From now on, Davy was looking out
for his stomach, hunting everything alive along the trail. Hawks,
squirrels, small birds, gophers, and even wood-rats, were thrown into
one pile each night by the hunters, and then divided.
One evening Davy came in without fur or feather for the pile; but there
was a sick man in his mess, and Davy intended to feed him, even if he
himself went hungry. He found Captain Cowen, his commander, broiling a
turkey gizzard, and was told that the turkey had been killed by Major
Smiley, and divided among the sick. Davy went straight to Smiley’s
camp-fire, and he, too, was broiling a turkey’s gizzard. Davy told the
Major that it was the first time he had heard of a turkey with two
gizzards, but it ended with the sick man going hungry.
The next morning, Davy and his mess went on ahead, desperate with
hunger. There appears to have been no attempt to preserve military
discipline. For three days they went without food, and were ready to
“lie down and die.” At last they came to a wide prairie, crossed it,
and found a large creek and wooded bottom-lands. Then a squirrel was
seen, and Davy shot him, but the stricken animal managed to get into a
hole in the tree, thirty feet from the ground. Davy climbed the tree,
without a limb to help him, and fished the dead creature out of the
hole. He says that showed how hungry he was. Shortly after he and the
man with him shot two more squirrels, and also started up a flock of
wild turkeys, finally killing two of them. The hunters then raised
a shout, and were soon joined by the rest of their party, when they
cooked the game and ate it, without salt or bread. The next day a
relief corps came back with a small quantity of flour and other food
from Fort Decatur, and some bee-trees were also found, the honey making
some of the men sick.
Reaching Fort Decatur, the company could get no more than one ration of
meat, and no bread. Davy, who never spared himself, crossed the river
and went to Black Warrior’s town, where he tried to buy food. Taking
off his large hat, he offered an Indian a silver dollar if he would
fill it with corn. The Indian had no corn, but he told Davy of another
of the tribe, who had some left. When the latter was asked to sell part
of his precious store, he refused silver.
“You got some bullet?” he asked.
Davy produced ten bullets, for which he got his hatful of corn.
The Indian weighed the matter in his mind, and asked again, “You got
some powder?”
For ten charges of powder another hatful was bought, and tied up in
Davy’s hunting-shirt. He said that fifty silver dollars would not have
bought it. After much tramping, going out of the way to get rations,
and leaving as many as thirteen horses played out in a single day, they
reached Fort Strother, on the Tennessee, where there was at last plenty
of food. Here it was that the volunteers going to New Orleans were met,
among them Davy’s younger brother.
From there Davy went directly home to his family. “I found them all
well, and doing well,” he says, “and although I was only a rough
backwoodsman, they seemed mighty glad to see me, however little the
quality folks might suppose it. For I do reckon we love as hard in the
backwoods country as any people in the whole creation.”
VIII.
BEAN’S CREEK
Two years on Bean’s Creek――A new girl in the family――The death of Polly
Crockett――Some years of peace――The prairie schooner and the steamboat
make their appearance――Davy marries again――He makes another excursion
into Alabama, and nearly dies of fever――Saved by a whole bottle of
Bateman’s Drops――Returns home and moves to Shoal Creek――Becomes a
magistrate of Giles County, and learns to write――Elected Colonel of a
regiment of State militia――Davy enters the political field――Squirrel
hunts and barbecues――He makes his first stump speech――Elected to the
State Legislature and becomes the Honorable David Crockett.
Of the period of his life described in the preceding chapter, Davy
afterwards said, “This closed my career as a warrior, and I am glad of
it, for I like life a heap better now than I did then; and I am glad
all over that I lived to see these times, which I should not have done
if I had kept fooling along in war, and got used up at it.”
He then goes on to say something of the political situation when he
was writing his book, and this, though irrelevant, will be quoted as
a good specimen of his style of writing, and his determined opposition
to the proceedings of the Jackson administration, nearly twenty years
later.
“When I say I am glad, I just mean that I am glad that I am alive,
for there is a confounded heap of things that I a’nt glad of at all.
I a’nt glad, for example, that the ‘Government’ moved the deposits
[here he refers to Jackson’s war on the United States Bank], and if my
military glory should take such a turn as to make me President after
the General’s time, I’ll move them back. Yes, I, the ‘Government,’ will
‘take the responsibility,’ and move them back again. If I don’t, I wish
I may be shot.”
[Illustration]
The illustrations on the preceding page show the two sides of a coin
struck in the days of the Bank war, and the legends and designs of
this curious token are from the partisan phrases of the enemies of Old
Hickory.
For two years Davy remained at the Bean’s Creek home, where a girl baby
was added to his family. Then came a turning point in his career――the
death of Polly Crockett. At the age of about twenty-seven, the little
wife whom Davy had loved, as he says, “almost enough to eat her,”
passed into the far unknown. She had fulfilled the duties of the true
woman, and brought her children into the world and cared for them while
their father fought back the terror of the scalping-knife and tomahawk.
The year 1817 came in as the first in which the armies of the world
were not to cut each others’ throats, or do battle to the death. The
phantom of Napoleon had risen to confound the pampered sovereigns
of the world, and to lead to bloody graves the youth and strength
of Europe. Out of the temporary tyranny of the Little Corporal had
come the Louisiana Purchase, that was to change the history of our
own country. Twenty-eight years of war was past, and Napoleon was now
quarrelling with his jailer at St. Helena! At least, the dethroned
Emperor could remember with satisfaction his words after he had sold
the Louisiana territory to the United States:
“I have given England a rival who, sooner or later, will humble her
pride.”
His prophecy was coming true. Endless caravans of prairie schooners
were wending their way to the West, and on a single turnpike fifteen
thousand wagons paid toll in 1817. In Pittsburg there were less than
ten thousand people, and Chicago was yet unknown. Everywhere in the
valleys of the great rivers, and out upon the rolling plains from
whence their waters came, the log cabin or the sod-house arose as if
by magic. A single room, a door with latch and string, and perhaps a
window of paper rubbed with oil, were what the settler pictured in his
dreams of a future home. The first steamboat upon the Mississippi,
at St. Louis, was a harbinger of the new dispensation, the era of
steam. The spirit of progress let no man rest, and from each new Indian
purchase to the next, the pioneer went on, unsatisfied.
Davy Crockett was now thirty-one, a “rough backwoodsman,” unable to
write, but strong and brave. His brother and his wife had come to live
with Davy, and to help in caring for his two boys and the baby, but
he felt the need of a real home. At last he married the widow of a
volunteer killed in the Creek War. Between them they had five children
to begin housekeeping with. Davy’s second marriage was a wise step, and
he never regretted it. Having thus provided himself with a helpmeet,
he was at liberty to indulge the restless strain in his blood by an
excursion into Alabama, with three neighbors. Why he did so is not of
record, but he had been farming for nearly three years, and evidently
wanted a change.
Crossing the Tennessee, the four men went to where Tuscaloosa is now
situated. One of the party, named Frazier, was bitten by a copperhead
snake in crossing a swamp, and was left at the house of a settler
whom he had known before the war. The others made camp and hobbled
their horses for the night. The job was not a good one, or some one
maliciously cut the ropes, for in the night the bells of the ponies
were heard, showing that they were moving about and uneasy. At daylight
Davy set out to bring them in, carrying his rifle, which he says was
a very heavy one. At every place where he found settlers, he heard
that the horses had passed along, but no one had tried to stop them.
After going nearly fifty miles, across swamps and streams, through
cane-brakes and over mountains, he gave up the chase and stayed that
night at the first house he could find. He started to retrace his steps
the next morning, but by noon he was too sick to keep on. His rifle was
heavier than ever, his head was aching with a fierce pain, and in the
midst of the wilderness he lay down, beside the “trace,” to see if rest
would help him.
A little after noon several Indians found him, and offered him some
ripe melons. He could not eat, and when the Indians signed to him that
he would die under such conditions, he fully agreed with them. They
told him that there was a house only a mile and a half away, and he
tried to reach it. He “reeled like a cow with the blind staggers,” and
finally hired one of the Indians to carry his gun for a half a dollar.
Reaching the house, Davy was dosed with hot drinks and put to bed.
The next day, although he had a high fever and was half delirious, he
persisted in going on with two of his Tennessee neighbors who had come
along. They were bound to the place where the horses had escaped, and
Davy took turns at riding behind the men until the old camp was reached.
His comrades were still there, and as Davy grew worse, they took him to
the house of a man named Jesse Jones, and went on with the two men who
had brought him back. For two weeks Davy was very ill, most of the time
unconscious. Despairing of his recovery, Mrs. Jones gave him a whole
bottle of “Bateman’s Drops,” the only medicine she had in the house.
He tells us that the result was a profound sweat, which lasted till
morning. Then he awoke, and asked for water, nearly frightening the
kind woman to death, for she had expected him to die without recovering
consciousness. The crisis being over, he slowly recovered, and when
able to leave, hired his passage with a wagoner who came along, and who
lived twenty miles from Davy’s home on Bean’s Creek.
When he hove in sight of his humble dwelling, on a borrowed horse, he
was welcomed as one from the dead. The men who had first set out with
him had returned with the report of his death, and his wife had sent
for his money, rifle, and other effects. The men had brought his horse
home, having found all the stray ponies together.
Another year passed at the same place; then he concluded that it was
too unhealthful there, and decided to go eighty miles north and west,
into the newly-purchased Chickasaw lands. The place where he built his
fourth cabin, in 1818, was at the head of Shoal Creek, near the divide
between the Duck and Elk Rivers. He at first started out to explore the
country for some distance, but was taken sick, and had to remain near
the creek until he recovered. Before that time, he concluded to try the
place as a cure for the fever and ague contracted in Alabama. Shoal
Creek was but a little way from the eastern border of the Chickasaw
land purchase. In many respects it was like the No Man’s Land of Texas,
without defined limits, laws, or courts. Many outlaws moved in, and
started to run things to suit themselves. To protect their rights and
properties, the law-respecting men came together, selected magistrates,
and gave it out that punishment would be the lot of those convicted of
wrong-doing.
It was probably 1820 when this was done, and Davy Crockett was chosen
to act as a Justice of the Peace. He set about his duties without
misgiving. In civil actions, he heard the evidence and ordered
judgment, or dismissed the action, as the evidence seemed to warrant.
The constable who assisted in these matters was able to make out the
necessary execution papers, or writs, and nobody questioned their
validity. Sometimes the prisoner brought before Davy would be a man who
had been marking his neighbor’s hogs. Proof of guilt was followed by a
whipping and orders to leave the place. In the Far West, this “marking”
is called brand-blotting, and the cattle-thief, or rustler, seldom gets
into court, or even is buried on the lonely prairie where he meets his
fate.
When matters had gone along in this way for some time, the Legislature
of Tennessee made a new county, named Giles, containing six hundred
square miles, and including that part of the Purchase where Davy lived.
In commissioning Justices of the Peace, all those who had been acting
as such were duly appointed. When he was furnished with books of record
and the usual blanks for his proceedings, Davy awoke to the knowledge
of his inability to read or write well enough to act. But with the help
of his constable, who seems to have signed for him in any emergency,
the new Squire managed for a while, and in the meanwhile diligently
used his time in improving his handwriting, until at last he was able
to do his part of the work. If he was a poor scholar, he had a keen
sense of right and wrong, and disregarded all the cobwebs with which
lawyers delight to obscure the spectacles of the learned judges before
whom they plead. Red Eagle, or Weatherford, three-quarters a white man,
and one of the craftiest and wisest of the nation he ruled, would
never learn to read or write, believing these accomplishments would
cloud his perception of affairs about him. He was a great orator, and
could make a better speech than Davy Crockett ever learned to make.
As Davy had never read a page of a law-book before becoming a Squire,
he relied on common sense in his decisions, and they were never
appealed from. The sense of his responsibility and importance in the
community in which he lived added to his dignity and self-possession,
and he no longer resembled the awkward and boyish scout from Bean’s
Creek. That there was something about him that people admired is
plainly shown, for the honors that he bore were almost invariably
thrust upon him, not sought after. It is not known with what motive he
was asked by Captain Matthews, a well-to-do neighbor, to run for the
office of Major of a certain regiment, the Captain being out for the
Colonelcy. Davy at first refused, but finally he allowed his name to be
used, and with his family attended a barbecue given by the Captain at
his home. The principal part of the affair was, of course, the serving
of the meat of an ox roasted whole, and the generous dispensation
of such beverages as the country afforded; but there was also a
corn-husking on the Captain’s place, and the young fellows and the shy
damsels who expected to pay the usual penalty for finding a red ear of
corn, were with the older people from far and near. In the midst of
the frolic, a friend told Davy that the Captain’s son had decided to
run for Major against him. Davy went to the Captain and asked what it
all meant. It seems likely that the decision of his son must have been
a surprise to the Captain, but he said the story was true, though the
young man dreaded to run against Davy Crockett, preferring almost any
other opponent.
This was enough to get Davy’s dander up. He told the Captain to tell
his son not to worry, for Davy Crockett was going to run against his
father for the office of Colonel. The two men went into the midst of
the company, and the Captain, mounting on a wagon, announced that
Crockett was to be his opponent in the election of a Colonel. That
there was something of the “real old Southern gentleman” in the
make-up of the Captain showed in this frank introduction of the man
who was to run against him. As soon as the Captain had climbed down,
Davy mounted the wagon, and explained why he had decided to try for the
office of Colonel, instead of Major. He said that as he had the whole
family to run against, he thought he might as well “levy on the head of
the mess.” Another man offered for the office of Major, and both he and
Crockett were elected by good pluralities over the Captain and his son.
Davy was now becoming a man of weight in the county, and even beyond
its borders. Politics then was the same keen game as it is to-day,
a little cruder, perhaps, but not more scrupulous. The leaders were
looking for men who could get votes, and in Davy they saw great
promise. He was asked to run for the Legislature, and in February,
1821, he agreed to. As the election was not until some months later, he
took a drove of horses to North Carolina, and was gone three months.
As soon as he returned he began an active campaign, in those days
called “electioneering.” He says that he found the people expected
him to tell them about things of which he knew nothing. His ideas of
government and constitutions were scarcely nebulous, and it behooved
him to listen to the words of wisdom that fell upon his ears. Like many
wise men and judges, he knew enough to “reserve his opinion,” and to
follow the example of the Tar Baby, who “kept on sayin’ nothing.” The
Assembly district comprised two or three counties, and it required much
travelling to cover the field. The most trying event in Davy’s history
was undoubtedly his coming before the Duck River people at the time of
the big squirrel hunt and barbecue.
From all parts of the district the squirrel-hunters came, with the best
rifles the world had ever seen. When Davy was chosen by one of the two
sides he received the best possible advertisement. The hunt lasted
two days, and only the scalps were needed in the count, the squirrels
being eaten by the hunters. The nuts were yet unripe, but the corn had
suffered from the little animals’ greed, and they were fat and saucy.
Black squirrels, gray squirrels, foxies, red squirrels, all helped to
swell the count. Davy killed a large number in the way by which he had
made a reputation: he “barked” them by shooting between the squirrel
and the limb on which it sat, generally killing it without a scar. When
the scalps were counted it was found that Davy’s side had won, and
their opponents furnished the materials for the barbecue, and provided
music for the dancing that followed.
All day great fires had been kept going in long pits dug in the ground,
hard, dry beech and maple being used for fuel. On the next morning,
the last day of the hunt, half of a fatted ox or deer was placed over
the coals of each pit on an iron rod or a green sapling, and slowly
roasted, being carefully watched, seasoned, and basted with fat. When
everything was ready, the meat was cut from the bones by skilful
carvers, and the hungry crowd was served. There is no sauce like
hunger, and no meat like that roasted over a bed of hardwood coals.
After the feast, came the dancing. But between the barbecue and the
time for the “Virginny Reel” and “Money Musk,” with the hoedowns,
pigeon-wings, and other rural embellishments, the people had to be
amused, and Davy was called on for a speech. What he thought and did in
this crisis is best told in his own words:
“A public document I had never seen, nor did I know there were such
things; and how to begin I couldn’t tell. I made many apologies, and
tried to get off, for I know’d I had to run against a man who could
speak prime, and I know’d, too, that I wasn’t able to shuffle and cut
with him. He was there, and, knowing my ignorance as well as I did
myself, he also urged me to make a speech. The truth is, he thought
my being a candidate was a mere matter of sport, and didn’t think
for a moment that he was in any danger from an ignorant backwoods
bear-hunter. I found I couldn’t get off, and so I determined just to go
ahead, and leave it to chance what I should say. I got up and told the
people I reckoned they knowed what I had come for, but if not, I could
tell them. I had come for their votes, and if they didn’t watch mighty
close I’d get them too. Then I tried to speak about something else
(about government), until I choked up as bad as if my mouth had been
jammed and crammed chock full of dry mush. There the people stood,
listening all the while, with their eyes, mouths, and ears open, to
catch every word I would speak.
“At last I told them I was like a fellow I had heard of not long
before; he was beating on the head of an empty barrel near the
road-side, when a traveller, passing along, asked him what he was doing
that for? The fellow replied that there had been some cider in that
barrel a few days before, and he was trying to see if there was any
then; he said if there was, he couldn’t get at it. I told them there
had been a little bit of a speech in me a while before, but I believed
I couldn’t get it out.”
Having in this way set the crowd to roaring with laughter, Davy told
them a few stories, then took the first chance to say that he was as
dry as a powder-horn. A great cheer rose as he led the way to the stand
where rum, apple and peach brandies, cider, and buttermilk were to be
had.
Then came the country dances, the name being a popular rendering of
the French term _contre-danse_, and the figures the same as might
have been seen――before the Revolution――in the gay court of Louis
the Fourteenth; as Davy, thoroughly at home, took his part in the
extravagant features of the frolicsome reels and riotous quadrilles, he
made votes by the hundred, and when the day of the election came about
he had two-thirds of all those cast.
IX.
A CABIN IN THE WILDERNESS
Davy builds a mill and distillery――Along Shoal Creek――A tidal wave in
politics――Another one in Shoal Creek leaves Davy without a dollar――The
year 1822 sees Davy seeking a new home on the Obion River――Encounter
of his party with floods――The story of the flat-boat’s trip up the
Obion――Davy builds a cabin in the wilderness――A great day for deer――The
passing of the red man――Davy returns to the Obion with his whole
family――Risks his life for a keg of powder at Christmas time――He is now
loaded for bears.
While Davy Crockett was rapidly becoming known to the people of his
State, he was planning to increase his income by building a large
distillery, and a mill for grinding corn, with an addition for the
manufacture of powder. He had saved enough money partly to pay for it,
and built it in a great measure with his own hands. After the mill
began its output, Mrs. Crockett acted as miller when Davy was absent.
She is said to have been able to lift the bags of corn about, as
well as the men who brought them could. The tourist to-day will look
in vain for the site of the mill. Where the great wheel turned slowly
beneath the weight of the waters of the creek, and the rumble of the
millstones startled the traveller with the sound of distant thunder,
the rhododendron now opens its gorgeous buds, and the laurels cover the
waste places with a measureless profusion of delicate flowers. Among
the hemlocks close to the quiet stream, the thrush and the cat-bird
sing their liquid scores, and the redbird and the scarlet tanager vie
with the Kentucky and blue-winged yellow warblers in the glory of their
April dress. All things are changed in these old places of the world,
until we climb the mountains to its top, and see the far blue ranging
crests that blend at last with gentle skies, unchanging and unchanged.