Why was Davy Crockett king of the wild frontier?

Davy Crockett is one of America's great real-life legends. With a little help from Walt Disney, Crockett experienced a resurgence in popularity more than 100 years after his death. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn if this is fact or fiction.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Skipson, joined by staff writer Joshua and Clark.
How's it going, Josh? Going pretty well? Candice? How about you?
You sound very satisfied. You must have killed yourself a bear.

(00:23):
That's really funny you should say that. I just I
did just kill bear with my bare hands. Actually, that
explains the blood and the and the proud coon skin
cap perched atop your head. Yeah. I'm feeling very primal,
and I'm also right now feeling very um connected to
one of my childhood heroes, Mr Davy Crockett. You ever
heard of this girl called the Phone? He's one of
mine too. Yeah. Well, have you ever seen the mini

(00:45):
series that they launched in nine now at the first air?
And I know what you're talking about. There was a
five part mini series produced by Walt Disney and it
hauled in about a hundred million dollars worth of merchandise,
and that um did the afore mentioned coon skin cap,
like Josh has, as well as the sheet music and
different recordings of the theme song, which Josh has promised

(01:07):
to hum a few bars of right now, go, I
promise no such thing. Sorry, yeah, but anyway, I love
Davy Crockett. I always have and um, you know, being
covered in this bear's blood and shirtless right now, it's
really kind of taking me back to my childhood. One
of the things I always remember hearing about Davy Crocker
is that he was king of the Wild Frontier. Is

(01:28):
that is that fact or fiction? I'm gonna go with fact,
And that's rude a little bit in my opinion. But
Davy was just he was a real strapping man, and
he was sort of like the the George Clooney of
the American pioneering West, charismatic rugged and he stood for
a cause. And one particular Davy Crockett quotation stands out
in my mind, and that was be sure you're right

(01:50):
and then going go ahead. And he really lived by that.
He was a congressman in Tennessee for two terms, and
then by the time his third uh opportunity for reelection
came around, he had so vehemently opposed President Andrew Jackson's
American Indian Removal policies that he was sort of, um, well,
he wasn't reelected and he and that that was actually

(02:13):
a big reversal for him because he had actually taken
place in the massacre of an Indian village younger in
his younger years. So for him to turn around and
you know, vocally opposed Jackson like that over Indian removal
and land Gray, I mean that was kind of a
big deal. Yeah, he really readjusted his moral compass and
then not only did he sort of self banished to Texas, um,

(02:36):
I believe his parting words were you may all go
to Hell, and I will go to Texas where he
met his demise. Right, he did as a defender of
the Alamo. So he really did stand for what was right,
and you know, he went ahead and he went ahead
to his death. But I think that really makes the
King of the World Frontier agreed. And plus killing a
bear too, that'll do it. So now that old Davies

(02:57):
dead and I've just killed myself a bear, and I
think I'm the king of outfit to you or anything.
I think. So we're gonna have to amend this article,
but until we do, you compat it in its original form,
as was Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier on
competaff Works Dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, is at how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think, send an email to

(03:18):
podcast at how stuff works dot com.