American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett Read online

  Soon enough, Crockett met and took a shine to Margaret Elder, one of three eligible and attractive sisters who lived in the neighborhood. Margaret was coy and evasive and Crockett was stricken with longing. “I would have agreed to fight a whole regiment of wild cats if she would only have said she would have me.” He persisted, giving her very little peace until she broke down and consented, and they set a wedding day. Crockett even went so far as to obtain a marriage license on October 21, 1805, in Dandridge, Tennessee.7 One Saturday, just a few days before the appointed nuptials, Crockett went to see his fiancée. He had a brand-new long rifle, which he carried to hunt the woods for deer, and he planned to stop along the way to participate in a shooting competition. At just nineteen, Crockett was already a deadeye marksman, and he won a whole beef in the contest, then sold it for five dollars “in the real grit,” hard currency rather than banknotes. Winning the contest and the cash put Crockett in “a flow of good humour,” which translated to carousing and backwoods frolic that took him and the other contestants through the night and well into Sunday. Drunk and dirty, reeking of booze and tavern smoke, Crockett stumbled to Margaret’s uncle’s house, where he met her sister, who blubbered that Margaret had deceived him; she was already promised to another man, and they were to wed on the following day. Crockett’s tardiness and tendency toward debauchery certainly hadn’t helped his cause.8 Though the sister urged him on, claiming her mother preferred Crockett, he stopped in his tracks, devastated again. “My heart was bruised, and my spirits were broken down . . . so I bid her farewell, and turned my lonesome and miserable steps back again homeward, concluding that I was born only for hardships, misery, and disappointment.”

  The rejection put Crockett in “the worst kind of sickness—a sickness of the heart and all the tender parts,” and he moped about, twice heart-broken and utterly dejected. When it came to love, he appeared only destined for heartache. “I now began to think, that in making me, it was entirely forgotten to make my mate; that I was born odd, and should always remain so, and that nobody would have me.”

  Evenings, after long and arduous days of work, Crockett would sling his rifle over his shoulder and head out into the dense forests to hunt, and the time afield, kicking along through the soft ferns and grasses, crawling along fresh game traces, took his mind off his suffering. On one such evening Crockett came to a clearing and the house of a Dutch widow and her daughter, a girl with whom he was acquainted but for whom he had no amorous intentions. He referred to her as being “well enough to smartness, but ugly as a stone fence.” She was also loquacious and amusing, free to poke fun. She jibed at Crockett for his recent disappointments with women, reminding him of the old aphorism that “there was as good a fish in the sea as had ever been caught out of it.” His heart still ailing, Crockett doubted this adage very much, and at any rate, whether it were true or not, looking upon her homely visage he concluded that she was not one of the good fish. The girl must have felt sorry for him, because she invited him to their family’s reaping, where she promised to introduce him to one of the prettiest girls in the entire region. Reapings were multiday community frolics, or “stomp downs,” that included some work in the form of harvest, but were primarily social events complete with music, dancing, games and competitions, and skits and plays for the children. Crockett enjoyed a good time as much as the next fellow, and he was already starting to sharpen his bragging and storytelling skills. He had learned that a tale improves with the telling, until he even believed some of his fabrications himself. He agreed to invite as many friends along as he could find, and he would come to the reaping.

  Almost as soon as he arrived he blended in well, his gregarious nature at home meeting new people. Among the large assemblage there was a particular “old Irish woman” who immediately accosted Crockett and, as he put it, “had a lot to say.” She turned out to be the mother of the girl he had come to meet, had been informed of his business there, and teased him, praising his “red cheeks” and promising she had a sweetheart for him. Crockett had been jilted enough to remain wary of his prospects, but later that evening he was introduced to the Irishwoman’s daughter, Polly Finley, and he was not disappointed. “I must confess,” he said, “I was . . . well pleased with her from the word go. She had a good countenance, and was very pretty, and I was full bent on making up an acquaintance with her.”

  As the sun set, lively music started up and with it people began pairing up and dancing, swinging and knee-slapping to the fiddle tunes. Crockett asked Polly to dance, and they took “a reel” together, then sat down and conversed throughout the remainder of the evening, dancing when the mood struck them or others prompted them. The competitive and persistent young man may even have tried his hand at the fiddle. Polly’s mother, Jean Kennedy Finley, came around periodically, which did not go unnoticed by Crockett, who even became a bit nervous and confused when she jokingly referred to him as her “son-in-law.” Already a shrewd student of human nature, Crockett understood the importance of gaining Polly’s mother as an ally, and he treated her with great politeness, giving her much more attention than he would have otherwise. He looked at it this way: “I went on the old saying of salting the cow to catch the calf.”

  The frolic continued all through the night, right on until sunrise and the first chirpings of birds. In the dawn twilight they engaged in a series of plays to entertain the youngsters, and Crockett reckoned he had “not often spent a more agreeable night.” Youthful heartache often mends with subsequent infatuation, and Crockett’s recent maladies of the spirit were assuaged by his new prospects. He found that his “mind had become much better reconciled than it had been for a long time,” and he immediately returned home to the Quaker’s and struck a deal to work six months straight for a fair-priced horse. Proper courtship of the Finley girl would require transportation and money, so he put in hard at work for the next six weeks until her image and his memories of her so clouded his thoughts and daydreams that he simply had to go see her and meet the rest of her family. He mounted his new horse and rode off to her house, where he finally met her father, a man he immediately found amiable. Mrs. Finley proved “as talkative as ever,” and inquired all about Crockett, trying to assess his potential as a husband and son-in-law. Manipulative, pushy, and opportunistic, she failed to tell him that there was a rival suitor in the mix. Crockett figured that out soon enough when Polly arrived home with the rival at her side.

  “There was a young man with her, who I soon found was disposed to set up claim to her, as he was so attentive to her that I could hardly get to slip in a word edgeways.” But the sting he still felt fanned a competitive flame in him: “I was determined to stand up to my rack, fodder or no fodder.” Crockett feigned departure to see if Polly might give him some indication as to her desires, and sure enough, she suggested that as Crockett had just arrived, and lived fifteen miles off, that he should stay and the other fellow might depart. Crockett quickly took advantage of the situation, culling Polly from “her old beau” like a cutting horse, and eyeballing him now and again “fierce as a wild-cat” until the rival begged off. Pleased with his progress, Crockett soon discovered that he had yet another complication—Polly’s mother favored the rival. Crockett remained undaunted, managing to stay through supper and the rest of the night, departing the next morning for home.

  Crockett applied himself to work and some hunting in the evenings, all the while thinking of Polly. A few weeks later, he was invited to participate in a wolf hunt. Wolves were plentiful in the area, and farmers viewed them as predators against their fowl and young livestock. Counties began to offer cash bounties for the hides of mature wolves, and Crockett would join up with other men and dogs and strike out into the woods.9 On this occasion, while he was hunting in unfamiliar forests, the skies began to darken and thunder rumbled on the horizon. Crockett became disoriented, and against his own good judgment kept going, becoming completely lost as night fell. He had wandered six or seven miles into the woods and had not
a clue which way to go, when suddenly he noticed “a little woman streaking it along through the woods like all wrath,” and he hurried after her, figuring she would lead him to some form of shelter. He soon overtook her and to his great surprise and delight, it was Polly, also lost in the woods and running frantically to try to get home. She had been sent out to find her father’s missing horses, but lost her way. She shivered, cold and scared, as lightning began to flare overhead. Crockett comforted her and suggested that they slow down. Finding a path that looked more worn than a game trace, he figured it would lead them somewhere. As blackness closed around them they came to a house, where they took shelter. “Here we staid all night. I set up all night courting; and in the morning we parted.” Reoriented in daylight, they headed off to their homes, his ten miles off, hers about seven.

  Crockett now grew fixated on Polly, and he turned hard to his work, adding his own rifle to his labor and paying off the bartered-for horse in only four weeks. The couple met and privately set a date for their wedding, and Crockett then embarked on the elaborate and highly ordered country customs required to gain her parents’ final consent. When he arrived to ask for her hand, he found the father once again congenial, but “the old lady appeared to be mighty wrathy,” Crockett noted, and when he brought up the subject of marriage, she glared at him “as savage as a meat axe.” She raged loudly and ordered Crockett out of her house, even against her husband’s protestations. Hoping to cool her down, Crockett reminded her that she’d called him “son-in-law” quite early in the proceedings, “but her Irish was up too high to do anything with her,” so he arranged secretly with Polly that he would return the next Thursday and they would elope if they had to. He would arrive with a horse, bridle, and saddle for her, “and she must be ready to go” one way or the other, parental consent or no.

  Crockett decided there was no time to dally. He’d been thwarted before, so he took out a marriage license on August 12, 1806. A friend, Thomas Doggett, cosigned the required $1,250 bond providing that no cause existed “to obstruct the marriage.”10 Then, following custom, Crockett gathered with an entourage including his eldest brother and his wife, another brother, a sister, and two other friends, and off they trotted toward Polly’s house. Two miles from the house they converged with “a large company that had heard of the wedding, and were waiting.” From there, Crockett sent his best man ahead as envoy, his flagon empty, to see whether he would be well-received by the father. His consent would be confirmed if he filled the flagon with liquor.

  Crockett waited impatiently for the news. His recent bad luck with women and marriage, and the mother’s scorn, gave him good cause for concern. Finally he heard the hooves of his envoy’s horses trotting up, and he craned forward to know the answer. As he feared, Polly’s mother was “as wrathy as ever,” but the father had complied willingly, filling their flagon until it spilled over. Crockett responded to this good omen by hurrying to the house, leading a horse for Polly as he had promised. Crockett asked Polly if she was ready, and she nodded, then mounted her horse. Crockett commenced to depart with his bride, but Polly’s father stood at the entrance to the property, barring the gate, hoping to convince the two to stay and marry right there on the premises.

  He said that he was “entirely willing to the match, and that his wife, like most women, had entirely too much tongue.” The fair-minded Crockett wanted to do what was right, and was willing to listen, so he whoa’d the horses and waited while William Finley took private counsel with his wife. Polly’s father could be convincing when needed, because Jean Finley emerged altered, softening to Crockett right there, and asking his forgiveness for the way she had been behaving. She explained that Polly was her first child to marry, and she just wanted it to be right and proper. She promised to do the best they could by the couple if Crockett would simply agree to have the wedding at the Finley place. By this time Crockett had experienced all the wedding drama and complication he could stomach, so he consented immediately and sent for the parson. With what must have been great relief, on August 16, 1806, just a day short of David’s twentieth birthday, he and Polly were wed.11

  The rest of the evening went off without a hitch, and the next day they headed back to the Crockett Tavern. On the road they met a great company of people who had been waiting for their arrival. With all his family looking on, Crockett beamed with pride but also swallowed deeply with the responsibilities he had now brought upon himself: “And having gotten my wife, I thought I was completely made up, and needed nothing more in the world. But I soon found this was all a mistake—for now having a wife, I wanted everything else; and worse than all, I had nothing to give for it.”

  Polly’s parents were as generous as they could be, given their own meager circumstances, but the dowry of his new wife did not amount to much—though the humble Crockett hadn’t expected anything. The newlyweds received two healthy cows with calves, and immediately Crockett “rented a small farm and went to work.” The farm was in close proximity to Polly’s parents’ place, on Bay’s Mountain near Finley Springs (in present-day Jefferson County), and the two set in hard to make a home for themselves. Crockett’s former employer, John Kennedy, offered a wedding gift of fifteen dollars’ store credit, which Polly used for housewares and fabrics, and with this their humble cabin was soon “fixed up pretty grand.” Right from the outset Polly pulled her weight, impressing Crockett with her skill and ingenuity:

  My wife had a good wheel, and knowed exactly how to use it. She was also a good weaver, as most of the Irish are, whether men or women; and being very industrious with her wheel, she had, in little or no time, a fine web of cloth, ready to make up; and she was good at that too, and at almost anything else that a woman could do.12

  The sharecropping proved more difficult than Crockett had figured, if he had figured ahead at all, and likely hastened his developing disdain for farming. High rents and low yields on mediocre land conspired against them, and they had no profits to show after five years of continuous labor. Crockett later mused: “In this time we had two sons, and I found that I was better at increasing my family than my fortune.” His first son, John Wesley, was born on July 10, 1807.13 His second son, William, arrived sometime in 1809. With two new mouths to feed, Crockett acted in the tradition of many downtrodden yet hopeful frontiersmen: he packed up and headed out to new ground. As he put it, “I couldn’t make my fortune at all . . . so I concluded to quit it, and cut out for some new country.”

  With the assistance of Polly’s father, the young Crockett family moved nearly 150 miles in October 1811 to a five-acre patch of land near the headwaters of the Elk River’s Mulberry Creek. Here, on state land, Crockett built a cabin and received a warrant for title of the property. He proudly carved his initials in a towering beech tree, like a bear marking his territory.14 Crockett now had an old horse, a couple of colts, and woods and streams filled with game. Needing to feed and clothe his family, he began to spend more and more time out hunting, and his proficiency quickly became true expertise. Deer and small game were abundant. Crockett reflected on this time: “It was here that I began to distinguish myself as a hunter, and to lay the foundation for all my future greatness; but mighty little did I know of what sort it was going to be.”

  He had no understanding of the difficult trail to this “future greatness.” As long as the hunting was good he kept at it, always preferring the chase and the solitary time stalking through the woods to the doldrums of farm labor. Though he tried to make a go of it by staying put on a farm, David Crockett simply was not meant for the plow, instead forever called to the unknown mysteries of the wilds. And that call would cost him. Though he entered a claim for fifteen additional acres to add to his place on the Elk River, he eventually lost the entire tract when he could not afford to pay his taxes.15

  The Crocketts were forced to pack up once again, bearing all their belongings, which still did not amount to much, by horse and wagon to the Rattlesnake Branch of Bean’s Creek, just north of the Ala
bama border. Crockett dubbed this home “Kentuck,” perhaps presaging a future move to Kentucky, or possibly in allusion to the great hunter from there, Daniel Boone, whose legend Crockett would surely have known and admired. Though Crockett was too busy simply trying to survive from one day to the next, he was now a vital part of what would come to be known as the frontier and all that entailed, including the continued exodus westward and the sustained pressure that drove native populations farther and farther from their lands.16 Crockett, by necessity, would have been too myopic to understand his part in this, but all around him white settlers were breaking treaties and encroaching dangerously onto land that was not rightfully theirs. Out hunting along the riverside, listening to Bean’s Creek rolling gently over smooth stones, Crockett had no way of knowing that his life was about to alter dramatically, and that his skills with a rifle and as a game hunter would very soon be called upon in ways he had not anticipated, in hunting of a sort he could not have imagined.

  FOUR

  “My Dander Was Up”

  FOR MOST OF THE FIRST HALF OF HIS LIFE David Crockett had lived from day to day, driven by the barest necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. His connection to the outside world, to the affairs of the nation or state, or even political circumstances affecting his own region, mattered little to him until his family had settled tenuously on Bean’s Creek and a grave situation of immediate concern arrived smack on his doorstep.1

  Crockett well knew that his own country was technically at war, since even the semiliterate would have seen the regional papers on June 4, 1812, announcing that the House of Representatives had voted a declaration of war against Great Britain. The British had persisted in seizing American sailing vessels, refusing to vacate forts and outposts on American territory. 2 Within a week, President James Madison had signed the bill and the nation was officially at war. But this meant effectively little to the lives of struggling frontier families who viewed the war as the government’s problem. However, the British soon managed to bring the matter closer to home when they began to coerce Indian allies from as far north as the Canadian boundaries to the southern reaches of the Gulf Coast,3 convincing them (with money, goods, and weaponry) to resist the settler’s encroachment by any means possible. Crockett remembered the stories of the attacks by rampaging Indians on his own parents and grandparents, and he was aware of the dangers they presented, but his was generally a noncombative nature, unless he was provoked. Though his temper was short, Crockett was more of a prankster who liked a good time. While he wasn’t opposed to a little playful scuffling among the boys, actual war was another matter entirely. “I, for one, had often thought about war, and had often heard it described; and I did verily believe in my own mind, that I couldn’t fight in that way at all.”