thought in mind himself. He seems to have had no idea of trying to run,
for he told the man that he lived forty miles from a settlement, and
had no intention of electioneering. He went home the next morning, with
his little boy, and took up his usual round of duties.
About a week afterwards a stranger appeared at the edge of the little
clearing of six or seven acres, in the midst of which the smoke curled
peacefully from the great “mud-and-sticks” chimney of the Crockett
home. He came to the door, which almost always stood open, even in
the coldest weather, this being the usual custom in that part of
the country, and when he was seated before the leaping flames of
the fireplace, he took a paper from his pocket and read aloud the
announcement of Davy’s offering for the nomination. Davy heard it with
the same suspicion as that with which he had heard the suggestion at
Jackson, but the fact that the announcement would look genuine to the
public put him on his mettle. It was time to begin the spring work on
his little wilderness farm, but for this he hired a young man, and at
once set out to feel the public pulse. Everywhere he went his fame as
a bear-hunter, and as the member from the cane-brakes, had gone before
him. The three men whom he had met at Jackson had settled their affairs
by caucus. Doctor Butler had been named, and the others were working
for him. To these men, Davy’s electioneering was a huge joke: he lived
a three days’ tramp through the wilderness from any public highway;
he was a poor man, still a rough backwoodsman, and appeared as little
to be feared by his opponents as did Andrew Jackson at first in the
eyes of the “silk stockings” of the Old Dominion, who had so nearly
monopolized the statesmanship of the nation. As the campaign went on,
the news that Davy Crockett would be at a meeting brought out of the
woods men who had been there so long that they were like the Butler
County man who had to be blindfolded to get him on the cars. Whether
it was a barbecue, a shooting-match, corn-husking, log-rolling, or any
other of the usual out-of-doors gatherings, Davy, dressed in homespun
and wearing a coon-skin cap, and always with his rifle in hand, was the
object of attention and admiration.
When he met his opponents he told them that he had little money to
use in electioneering. Plenty of tobacco-twist and a jug of liquor
would be his best weapons. His young man and the coon-dogs on the Fork
would tree and capture all the coons needed to furnish funds for the
supplies, but in a pinch he could “go a-wolfing,” kill a wolf, and get
three dollars of the State Treasury money for the scalp, to keep him
“along on the big string.” His way of talking was more suited to the
frontier than to the halls of state; but the voters were with him on
election day, and with three candidates against him Davy came out with
two hundred and forty-seven more votes than all the others together.
The news of his election to the Legislature in a district to which he
had just removed, after serving as a Representative from another part
of the State, made him famous within the boundaries of Tennessee and
even beyond.
When the first session of the Legislature took place, it chose a new
United States Senator to succeed John Williams, whose term was about
to close. Senator Williams was up for reëlection, and it was evident
that the opposition could not beat him with their candidate. In this
emergency, they appealed to Andrew Jackson to allow his name to be used
against Williams. At that time Jackson was the most talked-of candidate
for the Presidency of the United States, but he was not unwilling to
become a member of the Senate while biding his time, and he entered
into the contest at Nashville, receiving ten more votes, in the joint
session of the Legislature, than Colonel Williams. Davy Crockett was
one of the twenty-five who voted against Andrew Jackson. Referring to
this matter, Davy said, in later years:
“Voting against the old chief was mighty up-hill business to all of
them except myself. I never would, nor never did, acknowledge that I
was wrong; and I am more certain now that I voted right than ever. I
told the people it was the best vote I ever gave; that I had supported
the public interest, and cleared my conscience in giving it, instead
of gratifying the private ambition of a man. I let the people know, as
early as then, that I wouldn’t take a collar round my neck.”
Thus early in his career as a statesman Davy became the political enemy
of Jackson. It is not likely that he ever forgave the General for his
attempt to force his volunteers to stay longer than they had enlisted
for. Jackson was for a tariff, and Davy’s party, locally, were against
it. He was looking towards the fulfillment of their wishes, and had no
way to avoid a vote against Old Hickory, who without doubt put a mark
opposite the name of Crockett, for the purpose of remembering him and
punishing him when a chance came about.
Davy Crockett is said to have been the first prominent Whig in
Tennessee. His prominence began with his second election as a State
representative, and while still in that capacity he was talked of as a
possible Congressman. In 1824 the first tariff law was passed by the
Congress of the United States, and Tennessee was not in favor of it.
Davy was at last persuaded to run for Congress, and made an up-hill
fight for the prize. Cotton rose in price after the tariff law was
passed, and the planters and merchants were so elated with their sudden
prosperity that they gave Colonel Alexander, Davy’s opponent, credit
for having helped them by his actions as a Congressman. He was elected
by two votes only over Davy, who never felt entirely satisfied that the
count was fair. There was nothing to do but to go back to work again
as a farmer, with an eye to any speculation that he might be able to
undertake. Some of his adventures during the year 1825 will be told in
the next chapter.
XI.
EARTHQUAKES
Making shooks for New Orleans――The building of the flat-boats――Davy
goes to Reelfoot Lake――A feeling of awe comes over Davy――The story
of a strange and mysterious place――Something about the night riders
and their neighbors――Where some of Davy’s descendants now reside――The
padre’s story of the Reelfoot earthquake and the destruction of New
Madrid――The earth trembles beneath his listeners’ feet.
After the harvest was over in the fall of 1825, the year after Davy’s
term as Representative had expired, he saw a prospect of making money
by the shipment of staves to New Orleans. There was an unlimited supply
of white oak on the Obion River and on the shores of a lake about
twenty-five miles from his home in the woods. He took a couple of
horses and an outfit, and started for the lake, which he reached the
next day. It is not known just what Davy meant by “the lake” referred
to, but it was probably one of the widened parts of the slow and
tortuous river, not far above Island Number Two, at the junction of the
Obion with the Mississippi.
As soon as he arrived on the ground, Davy hired men to build two
flat-boats and get out the staves. The staves were split from the
straight-grained oak logs cut in the woods and hauled to the water.
They were often called shooks, and when ready for market were made up
in bundles for shipment. When used, they had to be hewed and trimmed
with draw-knives, then stood on end in a circle, when they were hooped
with hickory bands into hogsheads and fitted with heads. The hogsheads
were used for molasses and for the cane sugar produced in the South.
Davy worked with the men he had hired, overseeing the plans for the
boats, until everything was well under way, when he had a visit from a
neighbor on Reelfoot Lake, who wanted him to take a trip to his part
of the country, less than thirty miles distant. Having heard something
about this strange body of water, Davy agreed to go, and was in sight
of his neighbor’s clearing before sunset of the day following. As
he saw the lake for the first time, a feeling of awe came over him,
as if he looked into a vista of some old dead or dying world. A fair
expanse of shining water, with islands bright with the autumn glories
of deciduous trees, and skirted by hills that were dark with pine and
hemlock or thickly set with oak and maple groves, was dotted with black
and decaying stumps that rose above the surface, high in air, like the
masts of a sunken fleet. In places, only the tops of the sunken trees
were seen, but everywhere, like the wreck that covers the sea after
storm and battle have done their work, were floating logs and drifting
limbs, charred and unsightly relics of the wilderness.
Reelfoot Lake is fifty miles long and several miles in width, and
where it steams in the sun were once great forests and primeval
hunting-grounds. In 1907, it was the scene of a murderous affair that
brought the Night Riders of Tennessee into ghastly prominence. On a
dark night they killed two men, and a third escaped by hiding under
one of the many logs near the edge of the lake. He was wounded by
the bullets of the murderers and thought to be drowned. So little is
known of the lake, that a description of some of its features should
be interesting. In 1909 Richard A. Paddock, in an article in _Sports
Afield_, wrote:
“It is a strange, weird, mysterious place, filled with uncanny sights
and sounds, haunted by the ghosts of former dusky inhabitants, whom it
swallowed without warning and extinguished in a twinkling of an eye
in the most diabolical manner, and whose tortured spirits even now
cry out for relief and freedom from cruel bondage on every dark and
stormy night. Strange and uncanny are its surroundings, and strange
and mysterious are its inhabitants; stealth and superstition lurk on
its borders. Danger and sudden and premature death are so common as to
be held in contemptuous disregard. Mysterious secrets are hidden in
its almost impenetrable islands――secrets and mysteries that I hesitate
to mention here, for I have had my warning, and know the danger of
disregard.
“The lake is inhabited by a race of people who are a class unto
themselves; there are no others like them; they take their living and
surplus from the waters of Reelfoot Lake. They have nothing else――no
other means of livelihood. It is their sustenance, their farm, their
business, their all. These fishermen make no idle threats. They are
stern, determined, ignorant, superstitious physical giants, who make
and execute their own laws, and recognize no others. They suffer from
mosquitoes, malaria, and chills and fever, to such an extent that their
livers are always out of order, and life has a bilious hue. They go
hungry often enough to make them desperate. They do not take kindly
to the visiting sportsman. They feel that he is a trespasser on their
rights; he is making them and their children go hungry and naked; he
ought to be made an example of, to the discouragement of other future
unwelcome guests.”
The lake now has all and more than it can support in comfort. Its
inhabitants are very poor, always on the ragged edge, always in a
hand-to-hand scramble with starvation. They have no other way of
gaining a living; they cannot do manual labor; they never have done
it, nor have their fathers before them. It is fish, hunt, and trap, or
starve, with them, and they usually do all four.
The people about Reelfoot Lake have among them some of Davy’s
descendants. His daughters and sons lived in that part of the State,
and his relatives and neighbors from the mountains followed the trail
he had made. It is not fair to say that his principles live in the
code of the Night Riders, but human nature is always the same, and the
hungry fishermen of Reelfoot are as jealous of their preserves as was
the Red Man of his hunting-grounds.
One night, when Davy sat with his friend’s family before the flare of
the blazing logs in the wide fireplace, there was with them a Catholic
Father who for years had wandered from St. Louis to New Orleans and
Pensacola, and back again, even as Brébeuf and the beardless Garnier,
and Isaac Le Jogue, had dared the dangers of the wilderness, seeing
visions of Heaven while their stomachs were empty, and ever blazing the
cross upon stately trees in the dark recesses of the forests. Davy
asked the Padre to tell him the story of the earthquake to which the
lake owed its origin. He filled his pipe with tobacco cut from one of
Davy’s twists, and then for a long time looked into the heart of the
fire, without speaking.
“_Hay catorce años, Señores_,” he finally began in the softest of
Spanish, and then, realizing that Davy would not understand him, began
again:
“It was fourteen years ago, almost, it being the night of the 16th of
December, of the year 1811, that I went on shore at the little city of
New Madrid, leaving at the landing the boat in which I had come from
St. Louis with Brother Anselmo. When we had found a place in which
to rest, and had refreshed ourselves with food for the first time in
nearly two days, we walked about the place, being cramped and stiffened
from our long sitting in the boat.
“The houses were far apart, built of logs, and set in the midst of mud
and filth; but in a greater building than all the others, we heard the
music of the dance, the sound of many voices, and all the echoes of
thoughtless enjoyment. There were the French from New Orleans and St.
Louis, boatmen and traders upon the great river Mississippi, and the
Spanish of the settlement, with the Americans from the Ohio and the
northern lands. We knew that we should see many we had known, among
the people there, and with Brother Anselmo I entered the room. It was
a great hall, with floors of sawed timber, very smooth for dancing,
and not like the floors of hewn logs that were in the houses of that
time. There were many candles about the walls, and also torches of
lightwood that flared and hissed and threw black shadows of the dancers
across the floor. When they saw us, there was silence, and no one moved
until we had been seated in a part of the hall where we could watch
the others. Never have I seen, Señores, so gay and so thoughtless a
gathering; there were beautiful women there, and the bravest of men,
and they were young. I saw the soft light of love in the eyes of men
who had dared the tomahawk of the Indian as they had dared the soldiers
of Napoleon and the dangers of the deep, and the smiles that answered
them were sweeter than those of Fortune or of Fame.
“As the night wore on, we looked from the open door of the hall,
across the swirling waters of the Mississippi. The stars were dim
with haze, and the air was still and soft and damp; it seemed hard to
breathe it down deep in the lungs, and the boatmen looked for rain. It
was eleven hours of the night, when wild sounds were heard without,
and all the frolic ceased. The reports of many guns and the war-cries
of Indians were soon recognized, and they grew louder and came nearer.
The people were saying to each other, ‘The war-party is returning from
the Chickasaw lands.’ It was not long before there came into the room
many white men and as many as twenty Chickasaws, daubed with paint and
covered with mud. They had been in pursuit of some of Little Warrior’s
braves, who had hidden in the swamps after the murder of the white
families along their trail. The chief, Big Tree, held up for all to see
the head of one of the Creeks, a sight, Señores, that chilled my blood,
for I knew it to be the head of White Corn, whose house was built on
the Coosa River, and whose hospitality was always to be counted upon.
“As I looked upon the wild rejoicing over the death of the misguided
brave, the old Spanish timepiece rang the midnight hour, so softly
and so sweetly, so like the benediction of an angel choir, that in an
instant all was still. Then the floor seemed to rise and sway beneath
our feet, the building rocked like a ship at sea, and as the torches
and the candles fell one by one to the floor, the cries of terror and
despair were like the shrieking of the bottomless pit. Before all could
reach the street, a dozen were trampled under foot.
“We were sick and faint with the swaying of the ground; the crash of
the falling roofs of the cabins was mingled with the roar of the water,
swelling in great wrathful waves about the banks. We held our breath
as the earth rose suddenly under a cabin across the way, higher and
higher, until with a leaping out of gas-like flame we saw what seemed
an open grave, deep and wide and long, into which the fated house fell
out of sight. There was no longer a crying aloud. Dumb with despair,
the hopeless people awaited the coming of the tardy sun. The earth
still rocked and trembled and yawned, and huge waves swept at times
among the cabins lower down. It was like the Day of Judgment, and what
we should see when day had come, no man could think.
“It is a long story, Señores, longer than you have time to hear. When
at last there was light once more, we looked across wide lakes where
forests of pine and oak had stood the night before. In many a place the
tops of the tallest trees were scarcely seen above the waves. Where the
bayous had been wide and deep, there was new, strange land, without
tree or plant, fresh from the bowels of the earth. The lake upon whose
shores we sit to-night had swallowed the hills and valleys of an
ancient hunting-ground; the blackened trunks that have stood these many
years will remain a hundred more to tell the story of the earthquake
that lasted for weeks and months, and changed the face of the region
about us; it destroyed the town of New Madrid, now but half rebuilt
in a safer spot, and it swept the wilderness with all the destructive
force of a hurricane. From this there came the story of Tecumseh’s
wrathful threat, to stamp upon the ground and destroy the cabins of
the Tookabatcha town.”
The Padre ceased, for suddenly the cabin seemed to swing like a
drifting ship. They all started to their feet, the children ran to
their mother’s arms, and then the swaying stopped. It was one of
the strange quakes that have never entirely ceased in the hundred
years since the time of the Padre’s story. As late as 1907 a rather
disquieting shock took place in the region of Samburg, but it did
nothing notable in the way of damage. There is no doubt that the
“harricane” so often mentioned by Davy was the work of an earthquake.
XII.
HUNTING BEARS
Hauling a net in Reelfoot Lake――A ton of shovel-nosed cats and
alligator gars――Davy rubs his eyes at the sight, and resolves to keep
out of the water――He kills fifteen bears in two weeks――He goes home,
but soon feels obliged to have another hunt――With his son, he kills
three bears the first day――The bear hunt in the cane――Takes a hungry
man and family into partnership in the hunt――How the “varments” spend
the long winters――He trees a bear near Reelfoot Lake――“Mixing it up”
with the dogs――Salting the meat.
Early the next day, Davy and his host were at the shore of the lake,
waiting for three boats that could be seen coming from a distance, two
of them under sail. When they arrived at the Jepson landing, close to
the house where Davy was staying, Davy’s friend had his own boat ready,
and in a few minutes all four were headed for a bay-like place between
some of the islands. In one of the boats was a long cotton net, brought
from St. Louis. Davy had never seen a net hauled, and was eager to
watch the proceedings. When near the islands, the net was strung
overboard, extending across the bay for several hundred feet. Two boats
were fastened to it at each end and it was drawn in toward the land,
where there were no stumps or trees to interfere. It was slow work, for
the net touched bottom, and often caught on sunken logs. There was no
appearance of fish within it as it came slowly in, until both ends of
the net were fast to shore and the bight was being hauled. When it was
about thirty feet out, a great fish broke water with a splash, and all
over the surface within the ropes were ripples that told of others.
Close to the shore were several stakes standing in the water, and
attached to them was the pound-net towards which the catch was being
hauled. The two boats slowly narrowed the circle until most of the
fish had gone into this. When all was ready, and the large net was
clear, the mouth of the pound-net was closed, and it was freed from the
stakes, when the ten men of the fishing expedition pulled it to a small
dock, built of logs, in a few feet of water. Standing on this, they
lifted the pound-net from the water and dumped the contents into the
largest boat. Davy shouted with astonishment at the sight. As many as
forty shovel-nosed catfish and a dozen alligator garfish writhed and
squirmed before his eyes. They might have weighed a thousand pounds
in all, but the traditionist of the Samburg settlement has not been
admitted to the Ananias Club, and gives only a vague history of the
catch in which his grandfather was interested, under the arrangement
of “share and share alike.” He knows that it was a big haul, but one
that is, of course, often outdone to-day. In the account of a trip
to the lake in 1908, to which reference has been already made, Mr.
Paddock gives a description of the fish named, and it is so much more
interesting than anything scientific, that it is repeated here.
“When I went to Reelfoot,” says Mr. Paddock, “I had never heard of a
spoon-bill catfish, and when I saw in the boat more than two tons of
these slippery monsters of the deep, _with paddles on the ends of their
noses more than two feet long_, I had to pinch myself to see if I was
awake.
“If I have laid myself open to criticism when I told about those three
big black bass, I am going to now ‘bust’ my reputation for veracity
wide open――beyond all repair――for, by actual weight on the scales at
our dock, one-third of those fish averaged seventy pounds apiece, and
the smallest would weigh fifteen pounds.
“If you have never been to Reelfoot, and doubt this statement, take a
trip down there, my brother. They are taking out these whoppers just
the same to-day. They dress them and take them to the dock, where they
get one cent a pound for them. They are the strangest of all fish; they
have no scales or bones, except a gristly spinal column. They have a
long, slender, symmetrical, and graceful body, and their upper jaws
project away ahead, so that at least one-third of their entire length
is nose, which widens and flattens out into a graceful paddle. Most
likely they use it as a shovel; I never had a chance to see one of them
feeding. They live in deep water, but I imagine that they shovel around
in the mud for worms.”
The garfish of Reelfoot Lake are of varying size, with long bills and
sharp, interlocking teeth. Some of them weigh ten to fifteen pounds,
and are formidable specimens. It is likely that after seeing what the
water afforded, Davy preferred to take his chances with the bears.
The fish taken in cold weather often are dried for winter use, and
sometimes smoked, affording a valuable supply of food. The lake is
frequently covered with wild ducks and geese, and water-turkeys or
cormorants act as scavengers. In Davy’s time it was too expensive to
kill water-fowl. His object in going to Reelfoot was to get meat for
his friend, who was helping in the building of the boats. Davy had
already killed and salted down enough for his own family, and as he
seems to have loved bear-hunting more than any other sport, he readily
took the trip to the lake, where the first day or two was spent in
fishing.
The bears were very fat and very plenty, and, for that reason, easily
treed. Davy said that he asked no favors of the bears, except civility,
as he had eight large dogs, as fierce as “painters” (panthers), that
no bear could get away from. The hunt near Reelfoot lasted two weeks,
and in that time fifteen bears were killed. Davy then went home,
afterwards putting in part of his time with the men who were splitting
staves and building the boats. He seems to have been something of a
capitalist at this time, or he may have been backed by some one’s
money. It was in December that he realized that he “couldn’t stand it
without another hunt,” and between Christmas and New Years he and his
son crossed the lake where the men were working for him, and turned
the dogs loose. Before evening he had killed three bears, which they
dressed and salted, putting the meat upon a scaffold built of saplings
and brush. This was the only way to save it from the ravenous wolves.