Davy Crockett

Front matter

WILLIAM C S PRAGUE

Book e.ah/L/-

Copyright}]?.

Preface

Fortunately, when I was completing the story of Davy Crockett, I made the acquaintance of Mr. A. W. Crockett, of Texas, a grandson of our hero. At my request, he read the proof of what I have written and, with one or two minor criticisms, gave it his approval.

He deprecates the story so often published that up to the time his grandfather became a justice of the peace he could neither read nor write ; and, as a refutation of the statement, he refers to a legal document, now in the Alamo, written by him when he was holding the office of justice in Tennessee. At the unveiling of the monument to Davy's widow, one of the speakers, referring to this paper, said he defied a majority of the judges and lawyers of the country to-day to write as good a hand.

He also expressed his disapproval of the published statements to the effect that Davy's language was uncouth and slangy, and referred to the expressed opinions of some of the older writ-

VI PREFACE

ers to the effect that these statements are greatlyexaggerated.

Perhaps Crockett's published autobiography may be largely to blame for the popular notion of his style of talk, for its pages give hundreds of examples of the faults referred to.

w. c. s.

Chicago, September 1, 1915.

CHAPTER I Davy's Childhood

When a fifth son was born to John Crockett and his wife Rebecca, in their rough little log shanty, on the banks of the Nolachucky River in East Tennessee, they called him David. But whatever name was given him on August 17, 1786, the day of his birth, the world has always called him ''Davy Crockett."

It was not a very promising world into which Davy Crockett was born. If he could have looked forward to the years of poverty, toil, and danger he had before him, he might well have been discouraged at the very outset. In that desolate wilderness home among the mountains, the rude speech and actions of the men and women about him were scarcely less rough and less alarming than the cry of the wild beasts in the surrounding forests, or the fury of the storms as they swept down from the mountains.

But from what we know of Davy as a boy and as a man, we can almost believe that even if he could have foreseen the future, he would have said on the day of his birth, ''This is what I like. This is my kind of a world. Let me stay!"

Davy Crockett had in his veins the blood of fighting ancestors. His grandfather was an Irishman, and probably one of those whose fighting spirit would not permit them to remain under the rule of old-world tyranny, for he left his native land and sailed away to make a home in America, the land of promise.

No one knows just where these Irish immigrants first made their home. It was somewhere in Pennsylvania, east of the mountains, and probably in a ''slab" shanty in the wilderness, for the government was generous to settlers, giving to any one who built a shanty and raised a crop a piece of land of four hundred acres. With strong arms to cut down the abundant timber, and with rich, virgin soil hungry for the seed, it was a matter of only a few months' time to make a home, unless, indeed, the Indians, the wild beasts, or the fever did not prove more than a match for the sturdy pioneer.

But the newcomers did not stay long in their first home. Like thousands of other adventurous spirits in the new land, they ever looked to the setting sun, lured on by the promise of better things beyond; so, packing their few belongings on a horse or in a rude vehicle, the father, mother, and children made their hazardous way on foot across the Alleghanies, living on wild fruits and nuts plucked by the way, on deer and wild turkey shot in the forests, or on fish taken from the streams, ever on the alert for the wild beasts and the Indians who looked with ill favor on these newcomers in the land.

Reaching a fertile valley in what is now Hawkins County, Tennessee, the elder Crockett and his sons built for themselves another shanty of logs with an earthen floor, a hole in the roof for a chimney, and rifle holes in the plaster between the logs, in case of attack.

And the attack came ; for one night the hideous yell of the Indian was heard, and when the savages finished their dreadful work, Davy's grandfather and grandmother were dead, one of their sons, wounded in the arm, had escaped into the forest, and another, who was deaf and dumb, had been taken captive and carried away by the redskins to be afterwards adopted by them and only rescued after eighteen long years.

What became of the other members of the family is not known, save that John Crockett, Davy's father, then but a child, escaped. Some have thought he must have been absent from home at the time, possibly working as a hired boy at the home of some other settler, for boys were put to work in those days when very young.

We know Uttle of the early Hfe of Davy's father. He doubtless grew up as a day laborer, working at a shilling a day and his *'keep," chopping down trees, hauling logs, planting com, and tending stock. When the war of the Revolution broke out, he enlisted and fought in the battle of King's Mountain. At the close of the war he settled in the wilderness region of North Carolina in what is now Lincoln County.

Of Davy's mother we know less. Her name before her marriage was Rebecca Hawkins. Doubtless she also was of hardy stock. Neither husband nor wife could read or write, and they knew nothing of the ways of civilized Hfe. All they knew was danger and privation ; and their days and nights were spent in battling against these. Davy says of his father, "He was poor, and I hope honest."

As with Davy's grandparents so with his parents ; they soon caught the western fever. We find them, in 1783, with three or four children — this was before Davy was born — making their perilous way across the mountains into Eastern Tennessee. Weary from the long journey, their eyes fell upon a pretty little river, the Nolachucky, near where a creek called Limestone flows into it. On its banks they built a rude cabin.

The exact location of this cabin is not known, but it was near the site of what is now the town of /--^ Rogersville in Hawkins County. It was here that, on August 17, 1786, Davy Crockett was born. He was the fifth of nine children of Rebecca Crockett, there being six sons, four older than Davy, and three daughters, all younger.

Up to the time he was twelve years old few incidents in Davy's life are known, but of these things we may be sure: that he never went to school, never heard a sermon, never read a book, and that all the education he received, if indeed he may be said to have received any, was that which was knocked into him by hard experience and by listening to the tales of chance visitors who, at long intervals, happened to spend a night in his father's cabin. He must have learned to plant corn by stabbing the earth with a sharp stick and dropping in the seed ; to chop wood ; to know the names and nature of the wild things of the forest and the river; to skin the game and prepare the hide for clothing ; to use the flintlock rifle, though that weapon was so heavy that none but a sturdy boy could shoulder it ; and to go long errands over the trackless mountains to the homes of the '' neighbors.''

While other more favored boys were dreaming of becoming great statesmen, or lawyers, or soldiers, Davy Crockett knew so little of the world that he aspired only to be his own master and carry his own rifle.

There were no men about him to inspire him to goodness or greatness. His father and his older brothers were rough, ignorant, and uncouth men. There was little to arouse the ambitions or aspirations of a boy whose early years were spent in such rude surroundings.

In twelve years the family moved three times; first, to a place about fifty miles to the southeast, where they built another cabin and raised a crop ; again, when Davy was eight years old, to the banks of the Nolachucky, about twenty-five miles below their first home, where Davy's father and another man built a mill ; but the mountain stream, swelled b}^ a big storm, overflowed its banks, swept away the mill, ''shot, lock, and barrel," flooded the cabin, and drove the luckless family to the hills.

Then came the third move ; this time to a spot on the Holston River, where, near a log settlement on one of the few trails from Virginia into the West, John Crockett, with the help of his wife and four boys, built a large log house and opened it as a tavern. The trail or road ran from Abingdon to Knoxville, and as the tavern was built on a small scale, the principal guests were teamsters who traveled over the road.

Davy lived in the tavern till he was twelve years old, becoming well acquainted with hard work and hard times. The change from the backwoods cabin to the tavern on the trail was a big change in his life. He now came in contact with the great tide of western immigrants. Rough men sat about the log fire after supper and told the news from settlements along the seaboard, as well as marvelous tales of war and conquest brought by the whitewinged ships from across the sea. We can imagine little Davy, in some snug corner, wide-eyed and wondering, as he drank in the news from the great outside world.

As yet, however, Davy's chief companions were teamsters and rough, uncouth men with neither morals nor manners ; as yet he had not learned his A B C's ; as yet he could not write his name, nor "do" the simplest sum in arithmetic. But he was a crack shot, was quick to help the teamsters hitch and unhitch, and was good-natured and popular.

Davy had a quick temper, we are told, and was not slow to resent an insult, but that was the way of people generally in those days. Something that happened in his first home, when he was five years old, illustrates this.

One day when playing with his four older brothers and another boy of about fifteen, on the banks of the Nolachucky River, a canoe ride was proposed. The boys jumped into a canoe moored close by, and pushed out into the stream — all but Davy, who, being the youngest, was left behind as being too young for such fun. .^

There were dangerous rapids in the river a little way downstream, and when the boat, with its crew of small boys, reached the middle of the current, it became unmanageable, and began a swift descent to the place where, as Davy says, the river "went slap-right straight down." The Crockett boys could have managed the paddle, for they were used to it, but the other boy, who was the oldest and biggest in the company, wouldn't give it up, but foolishly tried to manage it himself. He paddled and paddled, going every way but the right way, until they found themselves going, stern first, straight toward the falls. The cries of the boys attracted the attention of a man who was planting com in a near-by field, and, shedding his jacket and shirt as he ran, he leaped into the river. By the hardest kind of work he reached the boys when they were within twenty or thirty feet of the falls and just in time to save them. Davy confessed, in after life, that, young as he was, he was ''too fighting mad" at the boys at the time to care what happened to them. It is quite possible that he did not realize their danger.

But Davy's general good nature and dogged industry during these days at the tavern attracted the attention of a Dutchman by the name of Jacob Siler who was driving a herd of cattle across the mountains to Rockville in Virginia. The drover made John Crockett an offer for the services of his twelve-year-old son as helper. It meant a tramp of four hundred miles across the mountains, and it meant days and weeks of hardship and danger. But John Crockett and his wife did not consider that. The money offer, small as it was, probably not more than twenty-five cents a day, meant much to the father who was always in debt; so Davy went with the Dutchman, though with a heavy heart, for rude and uncouth as his home was, he loved it. Doubtless he had made many a day's trip over the rough mountain trail, so he was aware lo DAVY CROCKETT

of the hardships before him. And he could not have magnified these hardships, for what could a little chap of twelve years know of the dangers that beset a long four-hundred-mile tramp over a wilderness trail, with the rocky steeps of mountains to be climbed, unb ridged streams that must be forded, and dismal marshes to be traversed, as well as the consciousness that any clump of bushes might conceal highwaymen or Indians, and any overhanging cKff might hide a panther, a reptile, or a bear.

The Dutchman proved a good master and treated him well, so the journey was made without mishap. Furthermore, Davy won his employer's respect, so that after they reached their destination, which was about three miles from what is now known as the Natural Bridge, the drover gave him five or six dollars and told him he was pleased with his services. Also, he asked the boy to stay with him and not return to his father. The money the man had given him so pleased Davy that he accepted the offer.

In spite of this,: soon came the longing for home, which, as the weeks ran on, ripened into a determination to escape from his employer. He did not know that a boy of his age could not make a contract that would bind him to stay away from his

DAVY'S CHILDHOOD II

father, but he had been punished so often for disobedience that he thought this man had the right to his services, and that if he left him at all, it would have to be by stealth.

One day there came along three wagons loaded with merchandise, driven by an elderly man and his two sons, bound for Knoxville, Tennessee. Davy knew them, for they had stopped at his father's tavern. Their route took them near Davy's home. Here was a chance ! The boy told them his story, and, whether out of pity or because he needed the boy's help, the old man promised that, if Davy would join them the following morning at a point some seven miles farther along on the road, they would take him with them.

It was Sunday evening and the family were away from home. Davy set to work at once to make his preparations. Tying his few belongings and the few dollars he had saved in a bundle, he hid it under his bed and turned in, but not to sleep, for he was feverish with fear that his plans might be discovered. Between his childish love of home and his fear of his employer he felt, as he himself says, ''mighty queer."

Four o'clock saw him up and dressed and creeping out into the moonless night. To his consternation, eight inches of snow had fallen during the night and an icy gale was blowing. But what of that? Was he not going home? Was he not returning to those he cared the most for ?

A short walk brought him to the main road, and this with no little difficulty he succeeded in following. Soon he found himself plowing along through snow knee-deep, and numb with the cold. His friends, who were up and preparing for the start when he arrived, gave him a hearty welcome and a good breakfast and together they set off for Tennessee.

The lumbering wagon, loaded with boxes and barrels, lurched along the rough trail too slowly for the anxious boy whose heart beat quicker with every mile that brought him nearer home; for home, poor though it was, seemed ten times dearer to him now than ever before; his parents were there and all the people and places that were dear to him. So he asked if he might not hurry on alone, for he could travel afoot twice as fast as he could go by wagon. Two or three hundred miles of wilderness road lay between him and home. Think of it, you boys of twelve ! It was of such stuff that boys were made in the early years of our country's history. Permission was given him and he struck out alone. Alone !

Luckily, after several days, when nearing the

Roanoke River, which he knew he would have to wade, and that it would be freezing cold, he fell in with a drover returning to his home over the mountains, riding one horse and leading another. This was good fortune for both, as the man, who proved to be a jovial fellow, wanted a companion, and the boy sorely needed a lift. So they rode together until within fifteen miles of Davy's home, where the drover took another road and his young companion pushed on afoot. We can easily believe that he ran a good part of the Way, for he was now in familiar country, and a few more miles would end the long and toilsome journey. The scene at his home-coming can only be imagined, for while his father and his mother appear to have bestowed little thought on Davy, they must have missed the good-natured, willing, and resolute Httle lad who had been gone from them for months. And there were his brothers and sisters, eager to hear the tales of adventure the boy would not fail to relate.

CHAPTER II Davy's School Days

Though Davy was happy to be at home once more, he was now to be confronted by trouble of another kind — he was to go to school ! Not the kind of school that boys attend to-day, but a rude log hut with a dirt floor, a hole in the roof to let out the smoke from the log fire, a square hole in the side to let in the light, rude benches without backs, and one long desk consisting of a plank laid on four posts driven into the ground. The schoolmaster knew little more than the merest elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic ; but it was all the education possible to give the young people, and it was high time our twelve-year-old boy was getting a little of it.

But, alas and alack, Davy's schooling lasted just four days ! Every school had its bully in those days, and there was one in Davy's school. Now Davy Crockett was not the boy to submit to bullying, so after the fourth day of school he hid in the bushes by the road along which the bully was to go, and just as the fellow came opposite him Davy jumped out, and with tooth and nail went at him ! The fight was short but decisive, for Davy at this time had muscles like iron, and a temper fierce and unbridled. The bully was soon crying for quarter in good earnest. But victor though Davy was, there had to come a reckoning, and he knew it. There was his father and there was the schoolmaster, either or both of whom would probably punish him ; so he played truant the next day and for several days. He would go with his brothers when they started for school, would hide in the woods all day, and return with them in the evening. But this could not last long. The teacher wrote a note to the father asking why Davy was not attending school. When the note reached him, John Crockett was in no mood to wait for the boy's side of the story. Cutting a big hickory stick, he started for the culprit, prepared to give him a sound thrashing. Davy saw him coming and took to his heels, the father following. The chase kept up for a mile when the youngster escaped over the brow of a hill and hid in the bushes. The father returned home puffing and blowing and in no amiable mood.

Now the truant boy was surely in a dilemma. To go to school was to be whipped, and to go home was to get, as he said, an "eternal sight" worse whipping, so he decided to do neither, but to push on several miles to the home of a neighbor whom he knew, and there try to get work. Here he found a man, Jesse Cheek, who was taking cattle to Front Royal, Virginia, a point two hundred miles farther than he had gone on his trip the year before. He was not long in convincing this man that he knew how to drive cattle and knew the trail, so he was hired. A few days later one of his older brothers hired himself out for the same trip. People did not waste iliuch sentiment over one another in those hard days, and probably Davy went away without so much as a regret.

The trip was doubtless much like his former one, except that it consumed more time and took him through such prosperous settlements as Abingdon, Lynchburgh, Charlottesville, and Front Royal.

At the last-named place Davy got his few dollars of pay and started back toward home. The whipping was growing dimmer and dimmer in his memory and the old desire to see his people was coming back. A brother of the drover was returning on horseback and Davy decided to go with him, hoping and expecting to take turns with the man in riding the one horse. In this he was doomed to disappointment, for the man did all the riding.

After trudging along on foot for three days he told the man to go on ahead ; that he would follow when he got ready. Davy was now three or four hundred miles from home and he had but four dollars in his pocket.

At this juncture he met a man by the name of Adam Myers, who was going into Northern Virginia and was intending to return to Tennessee. Myers was a jolly fellow and Davy liked him. The result was that the boy for two days accompanied him over the way he had come when he met his brother who was on his way home. The brother pleaded with Davy to go home with him, and so earnestly did he plead that the boy was moved to tears, and yet he refused ; for, as he said, the promised whipping came right *'slap down" on every thought of home.

When they arrived at Gerardstown, the wagoner left him and he hired out at twenty-five cents a day to a farmer. By saving his earnings Davy accumulated enough to buy a good suit of clothes and still have seven dollars left.

Then came the desire to see the big town of Baltimore where the great ships came in from all over the world. The opportunity arose in the shape of the wagoner who had been his companion a short time before ; he was hauling a load of flour to the c

Baltimore market and was glad to have Davy's help on the way. So, stowing his better suit in the wagon, and giving his money into the keeping of his employer, Davy entered upon his work.

The trip would have been uneventful had it not been that one day, on nearing a large town, Davy jumped in the wagon to change his clothes, when the horses took fright at some men trundling wheelbarrows, and ran down a steep hill, as much frightened as if they had seen a ghost. They turned a corner suddenly, broke the wagon tongue and whiffletrees, and sent the flour barrels helter-skelter in every direction.

Were it not for well-nigh a miracle this story would end right here, but luckily for Davy and for the world the boy escaped uninjured. Davy said this proved that "ii sl fellow is bom to be hung, he will never be drowned"; and further, that ''if he is born for a seat in Congress, even flour barrels can't make a mash of him."

At Baltimore the young backwoodsman got his first glimpse of the sea, and it fascinated him. Hours he spent on the great wharves watching the docking, the loading and unloading, of the great ships, and following them wonderingly with his eyes as they swung away on their voyages to distant lands. Little wonder that when the captain of one of the big ships saw him, a bronzed, muscular lad, showing so deep an interest in what he saw, he offered him a place as cabin boy on his ship which was soon to sail with a cargo to London. Davy accepted with alacrity and hurried away to get his money and his belongings, which were still in the possession of the wagoner. But to his chagrin, the wagoner not only refused to give him what was his, but watched him closely to see that he did not get to the ship and escape him.

Davy was now a little more than thirteen years of age ; he still could neither read nor write, and his total possessions were a suit of clothes for rough work, a better one for ''occasions," and seven dollars in money. Moreover, he was hundreds of miles from home, among strangers in a strange city, with no friend except his employer ; and now this friend had played him a mean trick. It is not strange that homesickness again gripped him and that he left the wagoner, without a cent in his pocket, and started again for his home in the Tennessee mountains. But two long years were to elapse before he reached there.

After trudging along the road for the first few miles of his long journey, Davy met another wagoner. The boy's heart was full. He had been robbed by his employer, threatened with a wagon whip, and prevented from going to sea on the great ship; he was penniless, hungry, and tired, with hundreds of dreary miles ahead of him. On meeting this man and telling him his doleful story he burst into tears. Davy's new friend was angry at once at such treatment of a thirteen-year-old boy and he demanded that Davy go back with him and point out the rascal who had mistreated him.

When they came up to him, Davy's friend demanded the seven dollars that belonged to the boy. The man answered by declaring that he did not have that much money in the world, and that he had spent all he had, but would pay it back when he returned to Tennessee. The dishonest fellow pleaded so hard that Davy and his champion felt sorry for him and let him go without the threatened punishment.

For several days the two traveled together and then they separated, the wagoner going to his home in Pennsylvania, and Davy continuing on his way west. The last night they were together they slept at a place where there were a number of teamsters, and Davy's friend told them the boy's story. A collection was taken up at once, and when Davy started out alone the next day, he had three dollars in his pocket, which lasted him until he reached Montgomery Court House. Here for a time he worked for a man who gave him a shilling a day, and afterwards for a hatter with whom he remained eighteen months. At the end of that time the hatter failed and, as Davy had not collected a dollar of his wages, his work for the eighteen months went for nothing. After a few months' work for another man he again set out for home.

On his homeward journey he reached the banks of the New River. The wind had roughened its surface and white caps were flying, making it dangerous to cross. He tried to get some one to take him over, but no one would make the venture. Then he asked for a canoe and said he would go over alone. People tried to persuade him that it was foolhardy, but he had already adopted as his motto *'Go ahead," and, tying his clothes to the canoe rope to keep them safe, he pushed off into the angry current. Then began a life-anddeath struggle to keep the bow pointed into the wind. Blinded by the spray, drenched to the skin, but clinging to his paddle, he finally brought the craft, half full of water, in safety to land, but not without having been driven two miles out of his course. Such was the indomitable courage of our fifteen-year-old lad.

Finally, late one night he came within ^ght of home. The teamsters had stabled and fed their horses and were going in to supper. He inquired if he might stay all night and was given permission. Stealing into the house, he remained there unnoticed, and when supper was announced, which was probably done by striking a horseshoe with a piece of iron, he took a place at the table, wondering if, among the strangers there, he would be recognized, and hoping he might not be until he could meet his father and mother alone. But it was not to be so, for one of his sisters (and a sister's eyes are keen) recognized the long- lost Davy whom the family had well-nigh given up ever seeing again, and rushing to him, threw her arms about his neck, crying, "Here is my long-lost brother!" Sure enough! Two years older, but there was still the same ruddy face and good-natured eye. All thoughts of the whipping were forgotten in the joy of the reunion, and we may well believe the young prodigal when he says it made him sorry he hadn't submitted to a hundred whippings rather than cause so much affliction as all had suffered on his account, for they had not heard a word from him in two years.