Ep. 114: David Crockett - The Early Years (Part 2)

On the last episode, we learned that David Crockett was America's first celebrity and that his identity was founded on being a bear hunter. We learned that there were four Crocketts that America knew: the bear hunter, the soldier, the politician and the martyr at the Alamo. Today, Clay Newcomb will dive into what he believes was the most important part of his life, his childhood in early life. They didn't put this part of his story on television and make cartoons of it to put on lunch boxes, but this period led him to be a soldier, which we're gonna talk about. We'll hear again from Cornell Professor, Robert Morgan and meet the man who's had one of Crockett's first guns, Betsy, in his family since 1803. We might even hear from the “greatest of all time” Michael Jordan. The way forward is complex. The truth is narrow and elusive, but Crockett's influence on American culture is foundational to learning why we are the way we are. We really doubt you’re gonna want to miss this one…

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
There was a real Crockett out there, not just the
one we saw on TV that my family had known
and been involved with.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
On the last episode, we learned that David Crockett was
America's first celebrity and that his identity was founded on
being a bear hunter. We learned that there were four
Crocketts that America knew, the bear hunter, the soldier, the politician,
and the martyr at the Alamo. Today we'll dive into
what I believe was the most important part of his life,

(00:35):
his childhood. In early life, they didn't put this part
of his story on television and make cartoons of it
to put on lunchboxes, and this period led him to
being a soldier, which we're going to talk about. We'll
hear again from Cornell professor Robert Morgan, and meet the
man who's had one of Crockett's first guns in his

(00:57):
family since eighteen oh three, to shoulder the gun they
call Betsy, And we might even hear from the greatest
of all time, Michael Jordan. The way forward is complex,
the truth is narrow and elusive, but Crockett's influence on
American culture is invaluable in learning why we are The

(01:20):
way we are. I doubt you're gonna want to miss
this one.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
That was part of his charm if you had this background,
very different from most other leaders and the politicians, and
you could draw on that again like Lincoln who had
all these stories from the farm and from the wild
part of the country.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
My name is Clay nukemb and this is the Bear
Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
for insight and unlikely places where we'll tell the story
of Americans who live their lives close to the land.
Presented by FHF gear, American made purpose built hunting and

(02:11):
fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the
places we explore. I'm trying to get a grasp on
the amount of residual knowledge Americans have on David Crockett.
He's down in there, deep in almost all of us.

(02:33):
Nearly two hundred years after his death, Americans seem to
be born with some knowledge of him. I'm about to
ask some folks about him. Excuse me, Jellen Kay, asking
you guys a few things here. Absolutely, what do you
guys know about David Crockett?

Speaker 4 (02:49):
Tell me everything you know Davy Crockett. The only thing
I know is he's a guy that was a woodsman,
and that's really all I know. Woods It's been a while,
so you know much about David Crockett. I don't know that.

Speaker 5 (03:03):
I know a whole lot. The thing that comes to
my mind is like when I when I think of
like American history, he's one of the like, to me,
one of the main frontiersmen that was back in the day.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Okay, so American frontiersman. Good, Thank you guys. Good woodsman
an American frontiersman.

Speaker 4 (03:25):
Not bad.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
As soon as I stopped recording, this guy says he
remembers the Davy Crockett song, which was first recorded in
nineteen fifty four to accompany Disney's Crockett trilogy. The song
would become America's number one hit for thirteen weeks. I
click the recorder back on. So do you know that song?
Do you know the Davy Crockett song?

Speaker 4 (03:47):
I remember hearing it.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Can you sing it?

Speaker 4 (03:49):
Yeah, I'll sing the.

Speaker 5 (03:50):
Part Davy Crockett king, Oh the while front tier day.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Let's see.

Speaker 5 (04:00):
I don't know all these words. I think I remember
the Kentucky Headhunters singing in or something.

Speaker 4 (04:05):
Yeah, all right, wonder the Kentucky Headhunters. Yep.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
The Kentucky Headhunters recorded the Ballad of Davy Crockett in
nineteen ninety one on a mountain green instead in the
Land of the Free Rain in the Woods.

Speaker 4 (04:28):
Who Haven't Killing My mind? You one adream?

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Their music video has the live band playing in front
of a dancing crowd, all wearing coonskin caps. Crockett of
the Wild rock Here they pan to the drummer. Behind
him is a window with the bear looking in. The
drummer abandons the set and chases after the bear with

(04:55):
his fists. The crowd cheers on the drummer chasing the bear,
and then the man is attacked by children with bows
Crockett on.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
The live run here.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
This video taps into two of Crockett's four identities that
Robert Morgan spoke about. He was a bear hunter and
a soldier in the Creek War. It's unadvisable and unnecessary
for a man to speak ill of the Kentucky Headhunters.
But that's not my favorite recording of the Ballad of
Davy Crockett. I'm a big fan of the Fest Parker version.

(05:41):
Do you recall in the nineteen eighty five movie Back
to the Future, which is set in nineteen fifty five.
Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, goes back in
time and walks into a diner. In Fest Parker's The
Ballad of Davy, Crockett is playing on the juke box.

Speaker 4 (06:01):
Hey hid, could you do jump ship?

Speaker 6 (06:03):
Which?

Speaker 4 (06:05):
What the life preserver?

Speaker 6 (06:12):
I just want to use the phone and it's.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
In the back.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
The Crockett craze of the nineteen fifties hammered America hard,
and the frenzy created a new template for how TV
movies could be heavily merchandised. Everything in anything you could
imagine was branded with Crockett's name and his signature coonskin cap,
pocket knives, lunchboxes, postcards, books, and guitars. But this wasn't

(06:38):
the first commercialization of Crockett. In his lifetime, he was
heavily commercialized without his permission by multiple fake autobiographies. A
world famous Broadway play was made about him, which led
him to writing a real autobiography, which was a global bestseller.
Europe and the Americans in the East couldn't get enough. Crockett,

(06:58):
who had gained notoriety being America's first frontier populist, politician
and boldly opposing Andrew Jackson. Crockett's anecdotal stories about bear hunting,
squirrel hunting competitions, and being able to grin coons out
of the tree mesmerize people, giving them insight into this
uniquely American identity of the frontier, which I would say

(07:21):
is still alive today. We're now going to leave the
hype behind and look at the real Crockett, a real
American backwoodsman. I've got a friend of meat eater whose
name rhymes with Cleaves Stanella that has historically been dismissive
of Crockett, viewing him to be a vein man, not
worthy to stand as a peer to Bear Grease Hall

(07:44):
of Famer Daniel Boone. This is like trying to compare
Michael Jordan to any other player. Jordan is the goat
and Boone is the indisputable goat of the American Frontier.

Speaker 4 (07:58):
Crockett is clearly the.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Lebron James of the American Frontier, which is major. Here
is Michael Jordan in this clip. A reporter asked him
about Lebron. I think Cleave could learn something here.

Speaker 7 (08:15):
How do you personally view that legacy that he's built
and do you think that by the end he will
merit a place in that conversation of top three Ton.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
James insert Crockett's names for Lebron Jordan Is Boon.

Speaker 6 (08:31):
I just think that, you know, we're playing different Eras's.
He's an unbelievable player. He's one of the best players
in the world, if not the best player in the world.
I know it's a natural tendency to compare Eras to Eras,
and you know it's going to continue to happen. I'm
a fan of his I love watching him play, you know.
I think he's made his mark, he will continue to

(08:52):
do so over a period of time. But when you
start the comparisons, I think it is what it is.
You know, it's just a standard measurement, you know, And
I take it with the greens. He is a heck
of a basketball player, without a doubt.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
I'd take any comparison of Boone and Crockett with the
grain of salt. Now we're going to continue our walk
through Crockett's life chronologically. We left off with him working
for an honest Dutchman named Canaday. We're trying to understand
where all this Crockett hype came from.

Speaker 4 (09:24):
Here's Robert Morgan.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
He was born where Limestone Creek runs into the Naulachucky.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
River and seventeen eighty six.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
And August seventeenth, seventeen eighty six, and he was born
in the state of Franklin, which was this state that
lasted only four or five years, and then North Carolina,
with the help of the federal government, declared it illegal,
and then of course it became part of the state
of Tennessee. But I've always seen that as kind of significant,

(09:54):
this place that only lasted for four or five years
and was like his life. He moved and moved, the
kind of instability as his debts catch up with him
and he's moving into the frontier, into cheaper lynn Freelin
and starting all over. He's like Daniel Boone in that,

(10:16):
I mean, he runs up debts and then you know
he has to has to try again, start again. But
he was kind of bound out by his father to
labor for other people to pay the father's debts. John
Crockett was always getting into debt. He was borrowing money,

(10:37):
and again he was like Daniel Boone and the older
crocketted the same way. He had to keep borrowing money
was always in debt. And this is very interesting that
this father would put his young son out to labor
when he was so young, to work hard. And this
is really important and understanding that from a very early

(10:59):
age he was this heavy labor hit farms.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
When he was twelve years old, he was what he
called bound out by his father to a complete stranger
that had come through the town. Kroccutt's father owned a
tavern in what is now Morristown, Tennessee. It was a
primitive hotel and restaurant. I want to read out of
Crockett's biography about a formative moment in his young life.

(11:26):
I don't want to take for granted that we can
hear these stories in Crockett's own voice. In history, a
primary source, a first hand to count is major. The
middlemen and their interpretation are absent from this. This is
when Crockett was bound out to a complete stranger by
his father. An old Dutchman by the name of Jacob Siler,

(11:49):
who was moving from Knox County to Rockbridge in the
state of Virginia in passing, made a stop at my
father's house. He had a large stock of cattle that
he was carried on with him. I suppose made some
proposition to my father to hire someone to assist him.
Being hard run every way and having no thought as
I believe that I was cut out for Congress.

Speaker 4 (12:11):
Or the like.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
Young as I was and as little as I knew
about traveling or being from home, he hired me to
the old Dutchman to go four hundred miles on foot
with a perfect stranger that I had never seen until
the evening before. Crockett seemed to be surprised that his
dad did this. Even a frontier child raised in such

(12:33):
a wild environment thought this was a touch irresponsible. I'm
certain Juju wouldn't approve, But then again, she did let
me and Chris Roberts float Briar Creek in a leaky
canoe without life jackets after a four inch rain in
May in nineteen ninety eight. You can listen to meeting
your close calls for that story. I'm out drowned, and

(12:54):
I'm not blaming Juju. Did your parents ever do anything
that looking back surprises you. I've found myself on the
trail of a rabbit.

Speaker 4 (13:04):
Brothers and sisters. Let's get back to Crockett.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Crockett's family were those aggressive Ulster Scots that came from Ireland.
His father, John Crockett, wasn't born in America. David said
he didn't know if his dad was born in Ireland
or on the boat passage over. His mother, Rebecca Hawkins,
had been born in America. Crockett's grandparents were some of
the first white folks to settle in eastern Tennessee, and

(13:27):
were killed in their cabin by Creek Indians in seventeen
seventy seven, nine years before David's birth. During the raid,
Crockett's uncle, who was both deaf and dumb, who they
fondly called Dumb Jimmy, was captured by the Creeks and
lived with them for seventeen years and nine months before
John Crockett, David's father, located his brother and purchased him

(13:51):
back from the Creeks. David wrote that he didn't remember
how much they paid for him. I bet Jimmy had
some wild stories. This was the world Crockett was born into.
His parents lived in extreme poverty on the frontier. His
father fought in the Revolutionary War but never talked about it,
and in his autobiography, David recalls as a boy watching

(14:14):
his father cleanse a gunshot wound using a muzzleloader ramrod
to push a silk scarf through a man's abdomen. Crockett's
cousin shot his neighbor who was picking wild grapes in
the woods after he mistook him for a deer. It
was a hunting accident. They called John Crockett, who saved
the man's life. David Crockett was one of nine siblings,

(14:34):
born fifth in the order. He was a middle child,
and he said, quote, I stood no chance to become
great in any other way than by accident. As my
father was very poor and living as he did far
in the backwoods.

Speaker 4 (14:49):
He had neither the means.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
Nor the opportunity to give me or any of the
rest of his children any learning.

Speaker 4 (14:55):
End of quote.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Here's mister Morgan on Crockett's ex experience as a kid.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Well, he was hired to help drive a herd of
cattle up that wilderness road, the old road, all the
way into Virginia, I think beyond Lynchburg. That's really something
to think about, this twelve year old kid being sent
to do that kind of heavy work. I mean, driving
cattle is a kind of tough thing. You've got to

(15:22):
keep them in line. You've got to fend off the
dogs that run out and scare them and make sure
they have enough to eat. And in cattle on a
long crip line, you can possibly carry enough feed for them.
So you've got to find a place, usually at a
what's called a drover's stand, somebody who has a kind
of tavern, and you stay the night and they sell
you corn meal or something to feed your cattle, and

(15:45):
then you move on to some very rough people out
there on the road in those taverns. So Crockett from
a very early age was exposed to kind of rough society.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Crockett was exposed at an early age to the roughness
of the American frontier. I'm certain in his childhood the
people he dealt with greatly influenced who he would become,
how he talked, how he saw the world, who he was.
It appears to me that Crockett had a very tender,
loyal heart, and it's exposed many times in his book,
but can be lost in his boisterousness. This tender heart

(16:20):
will also be exposed later in his politics, as he
would fight hard for the rights of the common people
and aggressively oppose the harsh Native American removal policies. As
a kid, he worked for this dutchman he was hired
out to for the entirety of their agreement. Crockett was
an honest man, but decided the guy was just going

(16:41):
to keep him, so as a young boy, he planned
a secret escape. He wrote quote, I went to bed
early that night, but sleep seemed to be a stranger
to me. For though I was a wild boy, yet
I dearly loved my father and mother, and their images
appeared to be so deeply fixed in my mind that
I could not sleep for thinking about him. Crockett loved

(17:05):
his mom and dad. That leaves a tender mark on
one's legacy. Crockett leaves in a snowstorm that will cover
his tracks as he starts a treacherous at least one
hundred mile journey home. Here he talks about what happens.
I was fortunately overtaken by a gentleman who was returning
from market to which you had been, with a drove

(17:27):
of horses. He had a lead horse with a bridle
and saddle on him, and he kindly offered to let
me get on his horse and ride.

Speaker 4 (17:34):
I did so, and was glad of the.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
Chance, for I was tired, and moreover near the first
crossing of the Roanoak, which I would have been compelled
to wade, cold as the water was, if I had
not fortunately met this good man. I traveled with him
in this way without anything turning up worthy of recording,
until we got within fifteen miles of my father's house.
There we parted, and he went to Kentucky, and I

(17:57):
trudged on homeward which place I reached that evening. The
name of this kind gentleman I have entirely forgotten, and
I'm sorry for it, for it deserves a high place
in my little book. A remembrance of his kindness to
a little straggling boy and a stranger to him, has, however,
a resting place in my heart, and there it will

(18:18):
remain as long as I live. Crockett's tender recollection of
this stranger is touching. He would be loyal and generous
to his friends and his family his whole life. Crocatt
would make it home and stay for about a year
before his father tried to put him in school, but
Davy couldn't take it. He got in a fight at

(18:39):
school and started skipping class here's what happened. At last, However,
the master wrote a note to my father inquiring why
I was not sent to school. When he read this note,
he called me up, and I knew very well that
I was in a devil of a hobble, for my
father had been taking a few horns and was in
good condition to make the fur fly. He called on

(19:01):
me to know why I had not been to school,
and I told him I was afraid to go, and
that the master would whip me. For I knew quite
well if I turned over to this old kitchen, I
should be cooked up to a crackling in a little.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
Or no time.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
But I soon found that I was not to expect
a much better fate at home, for my father told
me in a very angry manner, that he would whip
me an eternal sight worse than the master if I
didn't start immediately to the school. I tried again to
beg off that nothing would do but go to the school.
Finding me rather too slow about starting, he gathered about
a two year old hickory and broke after me. I

(19:36):
put out with all my might, and soon we were
both up to our top speed. We had a tolerable
tough race for about a mile. But mind me not
on the schoolhouse road, for I was trying to get
as far as tother way as possible. And yet I
believe if my father and the school master could have
both levied on me at the same time, I should
have never been called on to sitting the counsels of
the nations, for I think they would have used me up.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
But fortunately for.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
Me, about this time I saw just before me a
hill over which I made headway like a young steamboat.
As soon as I had passed over it, I turned
to one side and hid myself in the bushes. And
here I waited until the old gentleman passed by, puffing
and blowing as though his steam was high enough to
burst his boilers. I waited until he gave up his
hunt and passed back again. Then I cut out and

(20:22):
went to the house of an old acquaintance a few
miles off, who was just about to start with the drove.
His name was Jesse Cheek, and I hired myself to
go with him, determining not to return home as home
in the schoolhouse had both become too hot for me.

(20:44):
Crockett bailed home in school when he was thirteen years old,
and he would be gone on a wild excursion for
over two years. He lives a wild life of adventure,
rivaling the fictional characters of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer,
exceptrocket stories were real. We'll later learn, surprise surprise, that

(21:04):
Crockett most definitely influenced Mark Twain's riding. Crockett would again
work on a cattle drive, and as what he called
a wagoneer, he drove a wagon hauling supplies. Here's one
of Crockett's wagoneering tales. Our load consisted of flower in barrels.

(21:25):
Here I got into the wagon for the purpose of
changing my clothing, not thinking I was in any danger.
But while I was in there, we were met by
some wheelbarrowed men who were working on the road, and
the horses took a scare and away they went like
they'd seen a ghost. They made a sudden wheel around
and broke the wagon. Tongue slapped short off as a
pipe stem, and snap went both of the axles at

(21:46):
the same time, and all of the devilish flouncing of
the flower barrels that had ever been seen. Even a
rat would have stood a bad chance in a straight
race among them, and not much better in a crooked one,
for he would have been in a good way to
be ground up as fine as ginger for their rolling
over him. But this proved to me that if a
fellow is born to be hung.

Speaker 4 (22:08):
He will never be drowned.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
And further, if he is born for a seat in Congress,
even flower barrels can't make mash of him. If a
man's born to be hung, he'll never drowned. Now that's good,
but I hope that isn't why I survived Briar Creek.
Remember this book is written in the peak of Crockett's
political career, so he often mentioned his seat in Congress.

(22:33):
On Crockett's sojourn at the age of fourteen, he was
minutes away from taking a job sailing to London when
his older wagoneer boss physically restrained him from going. Crockett
would bounce around for some time more, but would head
home to Tennessee after two years, but not before a
wild canoe ride trying to get home. This was Crockett's

(22:55):
own Briar Creek experience. When I reached the river at
the mouth of the small stream called the Little River,
the white caps were flying so that I couldn't get
anybody to attempt to put me across. I argued the
case as well as I could, but they told me
there was danger of being capsized and drowned if I
attempted to cross. I told them if I could get

(23:17):
a canoe, I would venture caps or no caps. They
tried to persuade me out of it, but finding they
could not, they agreed I might take a canoe, and
so I did and put off. I tied my clothes
to the rope of the canoe to have them safe
whatever might happen. But I found it mighty ticklish business,
I tell you. When I got fairly out on the river,
I would have given the world if it had belonged

(23:40):
to me, to have been back on shore. But there
was no time to lose now, so I just determined
to do the best I could, and the devil take
the hind most. I turned the canoe across the waves
to do which I had to turn it nearly up
the river as the wind came from that way, and
I went two miles before I could land. When I
struck land, my canoe was about a full of water,

(24:01):
and I was as wet as a drowned rat. But
I was so rejoiced that I scarcely felt the cold,
though my clothes were frozen on me. And in this situation,
I had to go above three miles before I could
find any house or fire to warmat. I'm certain that
was a wild ride. He ended up two miles downstream anyway.

(24:22):
Crockett was on his way home after two and a
half years, and he returns to his father's tavern completely unannounced.
He's now fifteen years old and they don't recognize him.
I then went to my father's, which place I had
reached late in the evening. Several wagons were there for
the night, and a considerable company about the house. I

(24:45):
inquired if I could stay all night, for I did
not intend to make myself known until I saw whether
any of the family would find me out. I was
told that I could stay, and I went in, but
had mighty little to say to anybody. I'd been gone
so long and had grown so much that the family
didn't know me at first. And another, and perhaps a
stronger reason was they had no thought or expectation of me,

(25:08):
for they all long given me up for finally lost
after a while we were all called to supper. I
went with the rest. We had sat down at the
table and begun to eat. When my eldest sister recollected me.
She sprung up ran and seized me around the neck
and claimed, here is my lost brother. My feelings at

(25:28):
this time it would be vain and foolish for me
to attempt to describe I had often thought I felt before,
and I suppose I had, but sure I am I
had never felt as I did then. The joy of
my sisters and my mother, and indeed all of the family,
was such that it humbled me and made me sorry
I hadn't submitted to one hundred whippings sooner than caused

(25:50):
so much affliction as they had suffered. On my account.
I found the family had never heard a word for me.
From the time my brother left me, I was now
almost fifteen years old, and my increased age in size,
together with the joy of my father occasioned by my
unexpected return, I was sure would secure me against my
long dreaded whipping, And so they did. But it will

(26:11):
be a source of astonishment to many who reflect that
I am now a member of the American Congress, the
most enlightened body of men in the world that at
so advanced an age, the age of fifteen, I did
not know the first letter in the book. Here's an
interesting parallel between Crockett and Boone. Both were gone on

(26:32):
a two year transformative journey and then reunited with their
families and changed enlightened men. Daniel Boone went to Kentucky
for two years. His family assumed him dead, and the
legend has it when he returned, Rebecca was nursing a
newborn child fathered by Boone's brother. It said Rebecca didn't
recognize him when he returned and thought him a stranger.

Speaker 4 (26:55):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
Here's mister Morgan with more stuff that sounds a lot
like Boone, but also some interesting insight into Crockett's influence
on American culture through a writer that helped tell the
world who we were.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
All his life he was acting a part. He was
like Boone in that way. He loved to create a
persona and it started very early that people would remember him.
He have this fabulous ability to make people remember him
and to always be the center of attention. He was
a storyteller that people who met him remembered him, and

(27:36):
this came in very handy in politics later and probably
when he was in the military. And remember that when
he's writing the narrative of his life, he wants to
tell it so people would be entertained, and he was
hoping to run for president. So it's not that, you know,
necessarily he wasn't telling it accurately, but he wanted to

(27:58):
tell it memorably. But one of the greatest influences he
ever had was Mark Twain. He's not only a model
for Lincoln in the politics. Read a little bit of
his autobiography and then read the first page of Huckleberry
Finn and you will see the impact he had in

(28:19):
storytelling first person in dialect.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
So Crockett had influence on Mark Twain.

Speaker 3 (28:24):
He absolutely did, yes, and then other writers, but the
greatest impact was on Mark Twain. The stories, even some
of that was taken out of Huckleberry Finn and the
Tall Tale where the guys fight on the barge. I'm
half alligator, half horse, et cetera. That that's Crockett and
that had a you know, on Southwestern humor. But I'm

(28:46):
the greatest writer of the period of Mark Twain, and
so that's part of this tremendous impact that Crockett had
on American culture.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
Crockett influenced the way Americans told stories. Mark Twain was
born in eighteen thirty five, about four months before Crockett
died in March of eighteen thirty six. Their lives barely
overlapped the people our lives barely overlap is interesting to consider.
I was born in nineteen seventy nine, so certainly when

(29:17):
I was born there were people alive from the eighteen hundreds,
when people relied on horses for transportation, and the creation
of the automobile and the airplane hadn't happened. Time has
considered the fourth dimension of reality, and hard units of
time measured in years, months, and hours are deceptive. Time
is a mysterious, intoxicating phenomenon, often measured more functionally by

(29:42):
fickle units of feelings, like that feels like it was
a long time ago, or that feels like it happened quick.

Speaker 4 (29:51):
Time is rarely perceived as it actually is.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
We interact with time as if it's a physical substance
like water that can be measured and touched, But it's
more like a spiritual substance that we interact with but
can't see and can't manipulate.

Speaker 4 (30:06):
What's my point.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Crockett's life and ours aren't that far apart. Back to
Crockett's childhood. After Crockett returns home at age fifteen, he's
immediately farmed out again to pay his father's debt.

Speaker 4 (30:20):
Poverty is ruthless.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
This was normal back then, so Crockett didn't seem to
think much of it. The debt was thirty six dollars
and it took him six months to pay it off.
But it's here that Crockett began to work for himself
and finds a man that will be very influential in
his life. I want you to hear it straight from Crockett.
I next went to the house of an honest Quaker

(30:44):
by the name of John Cannaday, who had removed from
North Carolina, and proposed to hire myself to him at
two shillings a day. He agreed to take me up
on a week trial, and at the end which he
appeared pleased with my work, informed me that he held
a note on my father for forty dollars that he
would give me that note if I would work for
him for six months. I was certain enough that I

(31:05):
should never get any part of the note. But then
I remembered that it was my father that owed it,
and I concluded it was my duty as a child
to help him along and to ease his lot as
much as I could. I told the Quaker I would
take him up at his offer, and immediately went to work.
I never visited my father's house during the whole time
of this engagement, though he lived only fifteen miles off.

(31:27):
But when it was finished and I had got the note,
I borrowed one of my employer's horses, and on a
Sunday evening went to pay my parents a visit. Sometime
after I got there, I pulled out the note and
handed it to my father, who supposed mister Cannaday had
sent up for collection. The old man looked mighty sorry
and said to me he had not the money to

(31:48):
pay it and didn't know what he should do. I
then told him that I had paid it for him,
and it was then his own, that it was not
presented for collection, but as a present for me. At
this he shed a heap of tears, and as soon
as he got a little over it, he said he
was sorry he couldn't give me anything, but he was
not able he was too poor. Here you see deep

(32:12):
into Crockett's character and again you see that love he
had for his father. Here's Robert Morgan on Canaday's influence.

Speaker 3 (32:22):
Canaday had an enormous influence over the young Crockett. He
was literate, it was kind. He influenced him in I'm
sure in the use of language that here was an
educated person who gave him an example of somebody who
knew how to speak. It was generous one of his sons,
I think around a school, and he worked out this

(32:44):
deal with the son that he would work four days
a week and get two days of education. Or maybe
it was vice versa, but it was the young Canaday
who really taught him to read and write and do arithmetic.

Speaker 4 (32:58):
Canaday was a father.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Father figure for him, really absolutely in a critical period
of a young man's life from sixteen to twenty one, boy,
that is right when somebody is really trying to figure
out who they are. And Canaday was such a stark
contrast from his own father, who was a poor, impoverished backwoodsman.
But then Canaday was a staunch Quaker.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
He was very, very strict. He didn't believe in dancing,
didn't believe in parties, and Crockett and his friend would
slip out a day and go to these parties. Crockett
always life loved to dance.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
To the fiddle, He loved to play the fiddle.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
He liked to drink, and he'd go out to these
parties and drink several horns, as he called it.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yeah, a drink was a horn.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
Then he would slip back in.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
It's hard to estimate the power of people's influence who
are outside of our immediate family, especially when you're between
the ages of sixteen and twenty one. And a big
part of Crockett was his love for dancing, fiddling, and drinking.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
The Kennedy period overlapped with the beginning of the romantic period.
At a very young age, Crockett discovered girls who could
say and fell just absolutely hid over heels in love.
Turned out, the woman I think her name was Margaret,
Margaret Elder, was already well, she did marry somebody else.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
He first jilted him.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
Before that, he fell in love with one of Kennedy's
relatives and she was already engaged, very kind to him,
but he just absolutely was dazed by this beautiful girls
around him.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
I guess.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
When he was about twenty, he married Polly Findlay, the
beautiful and very kind woman his first wife, and worked
on a farm. They rented a farm. She had to
work very hard. They had two sons, and he realized
he couldn't really make anything. He had to pay a
lot for rent on that farm, and they just weren't

(35:07):
getting ahead at tall. One of the famous sentences in
his autobiography is I realized I was better at making
a family at increasing a family, increasing my fortune.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Another thing he said in his autobiography he said when
he was actually talking about his first serious love with
a girl that jilted him, as he said, I would
have agreed to fight a whole regiment of wildcats if
she would have only said she would have had me.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
He was always so colorful, but he was very good
at hyperbolated exaggerations, and also the things to do with
animals of the wilderness, with hunting. That was part of
his charm that he had this background, very different from
most other leaders and politicians, and he could draw on
that again like Lincoln who held all these stories from

(35:59):
the farm and from the wild part of the country.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
People loved Crockett because his humanity was always on full display.
He goes into considerable detail about being jilted the day
before his wedding. He said, quote, this was as sudden
to me as a clap of thunder on a bright,
shiny day. It was the capstone of all the afflictions
I had ever been met with, and it seemed to

(36:24):
me that it was more than any human creature could endure.
It struck me perfectly speechless for some time, and made
me feel so weak that I thought I should sink down.
My heart was bruised and my spirits were broken down.
So I bit her farewell, and turned my lonesome and
miserable steps back again homeward. My appetite failed me and

(36:44):
grew daily worse and worse. They all thought I was sick,
and so I was. It was the worst kind of sickness,
a sickness of the heart and all the tender parts
produced by disappointed love.

Speaker 4 (36:56):
End of quote.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Despite being a heartbroken by this, Gal Crockett, at age
twenty in eighteen oh six, would marry Polly Finley, and
they quickly had two sons. It was clear that Crockett
really loved Polly. They settled in Jefferson County in Finley's Gap,
approximately sixty miles south of the Cumberland Gap in near

(37:19):
current day Knoxville, Tennessee. Polly was a weaver and a homemaker.
David farmed, hunted, and often attended shooting matches, which he
regularly won. He was legitimately an incredible shot, no myth needed.
David had bought his first forty eight caliber flintlock rifle
from Canaday's son when he was seventeen years old. He

(37:41):
later traded the gun to James mcquisten. The gun is
still in possession of mcquistin's relatives today. I was able
to travel to East Tennessee to see the gun they
call Betsy, and to meet the owner, Joe Swan and
his son Ben behind glass in the East Tennessee Historical

(38:03):
Society Museum in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm inside of the museum.

Speaker 4 (38:11):
Oh, I think you're right on the top one.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah, I try that. Oh. Wow, is that amazing year
old gun has got its own spring in it?

Speaker 2 (38:23):
Wow? The gun has a patch box to store ball
patches hollowed out of the butt stock with a brass
spring opening lid that opens with amazing precision and smoothness
like the glove box of a Mercedes Benz. So I'm
standing here at the East Tennessee Historical Society Museum with

(38:47):
Joe Swan. Joe, you own one of Crockett's first guns.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
Is that right? That's true?

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yeah, Yeah, we're just sitting here looking at it. How
did you come about owning this gun?

Speaker 1 (39:00):
Well, my father had told me. When the Disney Crockett
thing came about, I got so excited about it. I
had to have all the stuff that they sold and
all that business, and so I really was into Crockett
in a big way, more than most kids, probably even
for that era. There are a lot of us that
were Crockett fanatics because of the Disney shows. But the

(39:24):
whole process of finding out that Crockett had been a
neighbor of my ancestors up in Dandridge and Jefferson County, Tennessee,
and knowing that there was a real Crockett out there,
not just the one we saw on TV, that my
family had known and been involved with.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Joe's great great grandfather, James mcquisten, traded Crockett a horse
for the gun in.

Speaker 4 (39:50):
Eighteen oh three.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
It's a forty eight caliber Kentucky long rifle style muzzloader.
It was made in Pennsylvania in seventeen ninety two. It
says that on the gun it's sixty two and a
half inches long and weighs ten and a half pounds.
It has a swamp barrel, which means that tapers to
the smallest point near the middle of the barrel, making

(40:12):
the balance point just right. So with Quistin ended up
with this gun that ultimately one hundred and fifty years
later ended up was your cousin's.

Speaker 6 (40:23):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
Yeah, it made its way all the way to the
coast Californian back.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
But yeah, now when your cousin had it, did people
know about it or was it just kind of like
in the family we just knew. Yep, old cousin Bill's
got Crocott's gun.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
My father's uncle. My dad went out to Oklahoma to
visit and that's where he saw the Crockett rifle, and
so he remembered that. And then when he told me
about that story, you got me interested in going out
to try to get the.

Speaker 4 (40:55):
Rifle back in the seventies.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yes, nineteen seventy seven it, yes, and.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
So this is Joe's son Ben. You said your dad
used to take this gun to your elementary school.

Speaker 8 (41:06):
Yeah, I grew up with dad bringing the rifle to
classrooms and different events.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
And is that hanging around the house for a lot
of years before you let them display it here?

Speaker 8 (41:18):
It's been in other museums, and so Dad's always wanted
people to see it, and you know, doesn't want to
hide in a dark room. It needs to be looked
at and appreciate it. And it's a beautiful piece of history.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
So here here's the question of the hour. Have you
ever shot it? Would it shoot? I bet it would shoot.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
It probably, Yes, yes, it probably would shoot, but it
would be it's just too old. The wood particularly so dry,
and the wood is so delicate, I mean it's so thin.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
And what kind of curly which is a strong wood?

Speaker 6 (41:51):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (41:52):
Yes, very very hard. Well, it was the wood everybody wanted.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Really, was this gun like a really nice gun or
an average gun?

Speaker 1 (42:01):
It was a nice gun. Yeah, it was a better
than an average gun.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
I would a young, impoverished Crockett would have been able
to afford that.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
I mean, I think by the time he got in
it to be about twenty was just about the time
I think he got this gun. He would have accumulated
enough of trading. He was a pretty good trader to
get enough enough money to buy a nice gun like that.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
You know, I think Crockett was smart enough to know
what the limiting factor was in his hunting, so he
knew he had to have a good gun. He lived
in a shanty and didn't have much money, but he
knew he needed to invest in a good gun. I
think that highly successful people are good at identifying limiting
factors in their success and targeting those areas. In Crockett's time,

(42:47):
a muslim loading rifle was a major limiting factor to
hunting and war success. Today it's not as much the
cheapest gun on the market is going to shoot okay
under normal condition. Back then, wet powdering guns not firing
were extremely common. The good guns were more consistent, and
a young Crockett bought.

Speaker 4 (43:08):
A good one.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Now, now, why do we call this one Betsy.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
That's more what everybody else calls it.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
So that wasn't that's not really connected back to Crockett.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
Crockett had a sister, Betsy that it was his favorite sister,
and she was the youngest sister. I believe by being her,
his favorite. I think he started calling his guns Betsy
after his sister.

Speaker 9 (43:31):
Might be safe to say this is Davy's oldest rifle,
but it's impossible to say if it was his first. Right,
So some people say his first rifle was called old Betsy,
but I think that name was something that just stuck
with his rifles, and it's hard to say, you know
what I mean, which was his first rifle?

Speaker 2 (43:48):
Yeah, his Crockett had this before he was the Davy
Crockett that we know.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
Right before he became Davy Crockett.

Speaker 6 (43:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Yeah, I wonder if they ever and I know you
don't know the answer to this, no one, but I
wonder if they used it just like as a functional
gun for a long time, because, you know, people, the
way we treat history is a lot of times you
don't know something was special until a generation later. You know,
it would have just been like, well, yeah, it's David
Crockett's gun. Big deal, let's go kill a deer, let's

(44:18):
go shoot a bear. And then eventually Crockett becomes this
national hero and his fame grows after his death, and
then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, we have
David Crockett's gun because like it, I even equated in
some ways to Native American stone points. There was a
time when people finding stone points on the ground it

(44:41):
was so common because it happened so recently that it
was just they didn't pick him up. But today when
we see a stone point, it's like it's a major
thing to find it. And there was a time when
it wasn't even just a common common thing, And there
would have been a time when everybody in the woods
had a gun just like this. And then it's interesting
to me to think about when did this become something

(45:04):
so special?

Speaker 3 (45:05):
You know?

Speaker 2 (45:06):
And Walt Disney helped, I guess in the nineteen fifties.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
He helped a lot.

Speaker 4 (45:12):
Joe and Ben.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
Let me hold Crockett's old gun and look down the barrel,
the long barrel and iron sights.

Speaker 4 (45:19):
Feel good.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
You can see a video of old Betsy on my Instagram,
and you can even buy an exact replica of this
gun and go hunting. I don't know why we get
excited about physical, common objects that were handled by famous people,
but humans have.

Speaker 4 (45:36):
Always done this.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
We're gonna get back to the chronology of Crockett's movement,
West David and poly stayed in Jefferson County until the
fall of eighteen eleven, when they headed further west. Crockett
said there weren't enough bears there and he wanted to
head deeper into the frontier, and he ended up settling
in Lincoln County, Tennessee, south of current in Nashville, at
the mouth of Mulberry Creek on the Elk River. Crockett

(46:04):
was now twenty five years old. He said, quote, I
found this a very rich country, and so knew that
game of different sorts was plenty. It was here that
I began to distinguish myself as a hunter and lay
the foundation for all my future greatness.

Speaker 4 (46:20):
But mighty little did I know of what sort it
was going to be.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
End of quote from Crockett's own mouth, We see that
he viewed himself as a hunter. He's coming of age,
and this is that time period when he said he
had seven of the most vicious bear dogs in the South.
I want to read another account of one of Crockett's
bear hunts that he included in his autobiography. That night

(46:45):
there fell a heavy rain and it turned to a sleet.
In the morning, all hands turned out hunting. My young
man and a brother in law who had lately settled
close by me, went down river to hunt for turkeys,
but I was for larger game. I told them I
had a dreamed the night before, and I knowed it
was a sign that I was to have a battle
with a bear, for in bear country. I never knowed

(47:07):
such a dream to fail, so I started up above
the hurricane, determined to have a bear. I had two
pretty good dogs and an old hound, all of which
I took along. I had gone about six miles up river,
and it was about four miles across to the main obien,
so I determined to strike across that, as I had
found nothing yet to kill. I got onto the river

(47:29):
and turned down it. But the sleep was getting worse
and worse. The bushes were all bent down and locked
together with ice, so it was almost impossible to get along.
In a little time, my dog started a large gang
of old gobbler turkeys, and I killed two of them
of the biggest sort. I shouldered them up and moved
them on until I got through the hurricane. When I
was so tired, I laid my gobblers down to rest,

(47:51):
as they were confounded heavy, and I was mighty tired.
While I was resting, my old hound went to a
log and smelted awhile, then raised his eyes towards the.

Speaker 4 (48:01):
Sky and cried out.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
Away he went, and my other dogs with him, and
I shouldered my turkeys again and followed on as hard
as I could drive. They were soon out of sight,
and the very little time I heard them begin to bark.
When I got to them, they were barking up a tree,
but there was no game there. I concluded it had
been a turkey, and that it had flew away when
they saw me coming. They went away again, and after

(48:23):
a little time began to bark as before. When I
got near him, I found they were barking up the
wrong tree again, as there was no game there. They
served me in this way three or four times, until
I was so infernal mad that I determined if I
could get near enough to shoot the old hound at least.
With this intention, I pushed on the harder till I
came to the edge of an open area, and looking

(48:44):
on before my dogs, I saw in and about the
biggest bear that ever was seen in America. He looked
at the distance he was for me like a large
black bull. My dogs were afraid to attack him, and
that was the reason they had stopped so often that
I might overtake them. But they were now almost up
with him, and I took my gobblers from my back

(49:05):
and hung them up in a sapling and broke like
a quarter horse after my bear, for the sight of
him had put new springs in me. I soon got
near them, but they were just getting into a roaring thicket,
and so I couldn't run through it, but had to
pick my way along and had to work close even
at that And a little time I saw the bear
climbing up a large black oak tree, and I crawled

(49:26):
on till I got within about eighty yards of him.
He was setting with his breast towards me, and so
I put a fresh priming in my gun and fired
at him. At this he raised one of his paws
and snorted loudly. I loaded again as quickly as I could,
and fired as near the same place in his breast
as possible, And at the crack of my gun here
he came tumbling down, and the moment he touched the ground,

(49:48):
I heard one of my best dogs cry out. I
took my tomahawk in one hand, my big butcher knife
in the other and run up within four or five
paces of him, at which he let my dog go
and fixed his his eyes on me. I got back
in all sorts of a hurry, for I knowed if
he got a hold of me, he would hug me
all together too close for comfort. I went to my

(50:09):
gun and hastily loaded her again and shot him a
third time, which killed him good. I now began to
think about getting him home, but I didn't know how
far it was, so I left him and started, and
in order to find him again, I would blaze a
sapling every little distance, which would show me the way back.
I continued this till I got within a mile of
my home, for there I knowed very well where I was,

(50:32):
and that I could easily find the way back to
my blazes. When I got home, I took my brother
in law and my young man and four horses and
went back. We got there just before dark and struck
up a fire and commenced a butcher in my bear.
It was some time in the night before he finished,
and I can assert on my honor I believe he
would have weighed six hundred pounds. It was the second

(50:53):
largest I ever saw I killed one a few years
after that weighed six hundred and seventy pounds. I now
he felt fully compensated for my sufferings and going after
my powder, and well satisfied that a dog might sometimes
be doing a good business, even when he seemed to
be barking up the wrong tree. We got our meat home,

(51:13):
and I now had the pleasure to know that we
had plenty, and that of the best. I continued through
the winter to supply my family abundantly with bear meat
and venison from the woods. A six hundred plus pound
black bear is a big one, but I believe every
word of it. If you've ever hunted bears with hounds,

(51:35):
you can spot Crockett's authenticity. He was the real deal.
It's interesting today how hound hunting for bears is scrutinized
by some woke groups, but it's a deep American tradition.
There's even many accounts of Native Americans using hounds. In
the eighteen hundreds, the Tennessee and North Carolina Bear Hunters
Associations both using their tagline quote our national heritage bear

(52:01):
hunting with hounds. I have a Tennessee Bear Hunter's Association
sticker on the window in my office. I am adamant
and passionate about the future of bear hunting with hounds.

Speaker 4 (52:12):
Here's Robert Morgan.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
It was very important these bear dogs. As you say,
he didn't like pure bread dogs. He had mongrel dogs,
and I wish I knew what kind of pack he had,
because they're very important to a bear hunter. My good dogs.
You have where I grew up, people that would love
to brag about their bear dogs, how many of them had,

(52:36):
and the thing you had to have some in that
area what's called a plot hound, Yes, a dog that
had been bred by the Plot family from bear hunting.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
There's one descriptor in Crockett's I believe it's his autobiography
when he talks about going in on a bad bear
at night and one of the dogs was white, just
one of them, though, which would have indicated that it
was was a walker hound, which is a type of
bear dog. But then all the other dogs were dark

(53:06):
colored because he couldn't see him in the dark, And
so there's a lot of people that speculate of what
they were because a dark bear dog could have been
a plot dog, which would have been unlikely that soon
after the plots got into America, those dogs would have
been distributed that widely, because it wasn't until later that
they kind of started to distribute out heavily from the

(53:26):
Plot family. But those bear dogs became really important for him.
So it was during this period of his life between
twenty and thirty after he got married, that he did
become He identified himself as a bear hunter, probably more
than anything in as far as a backwoodsman is that
he was a bear hunter, and to him that meant
bear hunting with dogs. The pure bred dogs in America

(53:50):
at that time would have been variants of foxhounds and
big game dogs brought over by Europeans. George Washington was
an avid houndsman, and then of course the Plots, who
developed their own breed of hounds specifically for bear in
the Southern Appalachians. If you hadn't seen our video on
the meter YouTube channel on Plot Hounds and Bear Greas

(54:10):
Hall of Famer Roy Clark.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
You should check it out.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
Like Daniel Boone, Crockett was involved in market hunting. Here's
an excerpt from Michael Wallace's book David Crockett, The Lion
of the West. And if I was recommending the best
Crockett biography that I've read, I would recommend Wallace's book.

(54:34):
Both bear meat and bear oil from the layers of
fat were in great demand across the American frontier and
well beyond. Bear pelts were fabricated into a variety of goods,
including rugs, bedrobes, coats, and tall, dressy fur caps fashioned
from the prize thick, glossy fur of a mother bear
with their cubs, and proudly worn by various army regiments.

(54:57):
As early as the mid seventeen hundred's, Colonial America exported
thousands of bare pelts. By the time of crocod who
took to the woods with his hounds and long gun,
great quantities of bear fat and oil, stowed in barrels
or sewn up in deer skins, were being shipped by
barges down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, Eastern Seaboard cities,

(55:17):
and European markets.

Speaker 4 (55:19):
In the field.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
Following to kill, hunters wrapped the butchered meat in the
bear's own skin and carried the oil home in the
bear's bladder. The oil was clarified by boiling it with
shaved slippery elm bark, and then stored for later use.
The bladder could be used as an oil cloth for
wrapping packages, and the fat served as cooking oil, lamp fuel,

(55:42):
various home rivities, and insect repellent. Smart hunters such as
Crockett sometimes followed the example of many Indian tribes and
slathered bear fat on them to protect their bodies from
the cold. Bre oil clarified with slippery elm. Bark tried that,
but storing oil in animal bladders is a Native American practice,

(56:05):
and clearly Crockett or as people got this from them.
When the bladder dries, it becomes semi translucent, and when
left for several months, it separates into a beautiful clear
amber liquid and a white opaque portion settles to the bottom.
It's cream white on the bottom and looks like olive
oil on the top. The separation line of these distinct

(56:26):
sections mysteriously changes. Sometimes the line is completely sharp and flat,
other days it's a thicker, cloudy mix. Sometimes odd shapes
emerge in this transition zone. Some Native Americans believed you
could forecast the weather with bare oil in a translucent bladder.
I've been watching bear oil in mason jars for well

(56:49):
over a decade, and it's clear that it changes with
the weather and temperature. In a world without Doppler radar
and communication, anything, and I mean anything that indicated any
insight into weather patterns was observed and noted. This wasn't
spooky spiritual voodoo, but humans being humans and using their

(57:09):
brain and spirit to note patterns, correlations and make conclusions
as normal. I'm fully convinced that there is a one
hundred percent scientific explanation to bear oil's presumable reaction to
bearometric pressure. But I'm also one hundred percent fully convinced
that the spirit realm is more real than this natural realm,
and if my life depended on it, I'd have my

(57:31):
spirit running full throttle when I was looking at.

Speaker 4 (57:34):
That grease line.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
In view of the chronology of Crockett's life, it's eighteen thirteen.
He's twenty seven years old, living in Middle Tennessee and
Lincoln County with Polly and the kids. In eighteen seventy five,
Crockett biographer John Abbott wrote about Crockett's frontier life, and
he said, quote, he loved to wander in busy idleness

(57:58):
all the day with fishing rod and rye rifle and
he would often return at night with a very ample
supply of game. He would then lounge about his hut
tannandeer skins for moccasins and breeches, performing other little jobs,
and entirely neglecting all endeavors to improve his farm or
to add to the appearance of comfort of the miserable
shanty which he called home.

Speaker 4 (58:19):
End of quote.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
This sounds like a harsh critique, but Abbott also pointed
out Crockett's strength quote. He had an active mind in
a very singular command of the language of the low
illiterate life, and especially backwoods slang. Though not exactly a
vain man, his self confidence was imperturbable, and there was

(58:42):
perhaps not an individual in the world whom he looked
up to in any sense as his superior. In his
hunting skill, he became very remarkable, and few, even of
the best marksmen, could throw a bullet with more unerring
aim end of quote. Marksmanship skill and the self confidence

(59:03):
would come in handy. In other places, a monumental event
would take place that would change the course of his life.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
War eighteen thirteen, as this enormous nation of Indians in
Alabama and Georgia the Muscogees. Whites call them the Creeks,
and they got into a war between different factions became
the Creek War, and particularly a militant group were called
the Red Sticks, and they were very angry at their

(59:36):
kinsmen who were so friendly to the white people and
selling them land and marrying white people. So they'd got
in this conflict, and the war really began at a
place called Burnt Corn, where one faction kills some of
the Upper Creeks, the Red Sticks, and in revenge, the

(59:57):
Red Sticks attacked Fort Mims to just north of Mobile
and killed everybody the Fort Mems Massacre. And there were
a lot of white people there too, and word of
this terrible massacre got out. I mean some people said
it was three hundred and forty they killed, and some
people said four hundred and five hundred. It was a
lot of people.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
At the time. It was really significant the Fort Memes.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
It spread over the country, but especially into Tennessee was
just north of that, and people are already afraid of creeks,
so this reached Middle Tennessee where Crockett was actually reached
him before it reached Nashville, where Andrew Jackson heard about it.
And immediately they started forming militias to go down and

(01:00:42):
attack the Creeks. Now we're talking about eighteen in of
eighteen thirteen, eighteen fourteen, and already there was a war
going on the War of eighteen twelve, and the Red
Stick Creeks had an alliance with the British and even
of the Spanish. So this has become part of the
War of eighteen twelve.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
The Shawnee leader to come so visited the Creeks in
Alabama in eighteen eleven with his doctrine of Indian unification
and resistance to white expansion. His words split the Creek
nation and instigated the war. It's interesting how all these guys'
lives were connected. In his autobiography, Crockett gave insight into
how Polly didn't want him to go to war, and

(01:01:26):
he wrote, quote, if every man would wait till his
wife got willing for him to go to war, there
would be no fighting done until we would all be
killed in our houses. That I was able to go
as any man in the world, and that I believed
it was a duty I owed my country.

Speaker 4 (01:01:44):
End of quote.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
Crockett enlisted and fought under Andrew Jackson in the Creek War.
It was here that he began to build a case
against Jackson that would define his life. Jackson was twenty
years older than Crockett, and they would both later emerge
as famous, populous Tennessee politicians. But during the war, this

(01:02:05):
is where their beef started.

Speaker 3 (01:02:07):
Andrew Jackson had a terrible trouble feeding his army because
the people who had contracted these loads of food to
them got lost for dishonest people some of them. It's
a starving army. And Crockett becomes very well known because
he's the best hunter there and you've go out and
bring in some venison. But he is caught up in

(01:02:30):
some of this terrible fighting. The worst point, really lowest point,
is the attack and the burning of the town of Taloosahatchie.
They do burn it and kill the people, that kill everybody,
and they later return there because there's some potatoes in
the basement of the house. The bodies that they burn,

(01:02:52):
the grease dripped down, and the rest of his life,
I mean, he's he's affected. That isn't like potatoes because
he ate them hungry.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
They were so basically burning human flesh, roasted these potatoes
that were under the cellar, and they were so hungry
that they ate him.

Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
Indeed, he never forgot it. And the two other things
that are very important in the Greek War for Crockett. One,
he brought a message to Colonel Coffee, who was his commander,
that there was some redsticks roving in a certain area.
And the colonel didn't pay an attention to what he
said until a lieutenant came and told him the same thing.

(01:03:32):
And this may be the beginning of Crockett's contempt for
officers and upper classes, and just ignored him titles, title,
and that burned him. He never forgot that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
Other thing was very important is in I think it
was December of eighteen fourteen. These soldiers pretty much filled
out their enlistment. They hadn't brought any warm clothes for
a very cold and often they had nothing to eat.
And they got together and said, some of the officers,
actually one just enlisted in, that we've got to go home.

(01:04:09):
And Andrew Jackson thought differently. He needed to continue the war.
He hadn't destroyed the Red Sticks, and they were lined
up to confront him. He was a tough guy. Jackson
the wrot and said that will kill the first men
who moved and they backed down. Crockett tells it different
in his autobio arser.

Speaker 4 (01:04:30):
Crockett was there, He was there.

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
Yeah, they did a little bit later, get released and
go home.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
Three things happened in the Creek War. Crockett becomes the
army's hunter and gains popularity, learning how to set himself
apart and engender people's respect. Secondly, the Creek slaughter at
Telousahatchie deeply impacts him, presumably igniting this empathy towards Native Americans.
Crockett talks about how they had fifty Indians backed into

(01:05:01):
a wigwam. An old woman was sitting at the doorway,
and she used her foot to hold the handle of
the bow and her fingers to pull the string back,
and she shot an arrow that killed one of Crockett's buddies.
He said it was the first time he'd seen a
white man die by an arrow. The army opened fire
on the woman and burned the wigwam and the Indians inside,

(01:05:23):
with the potato celler underneath.

Speaker 4 (01:05:25):
It impacted him.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
Lastly, the third thing is that he starts to hate
Andrew Jackson, and this rivalry would now.

Speaker 4 (01:05:34):
Begin to define his life.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
On the next episode, we're going to get into Crockett's
political career and the development of his celebrity status. It's
about to get fun. I told you the ride was
gonna be wild. I can't thank you enough for listening

(01:05:56):
to Bear Grease. You can follow me on Instagram, Clay Underscore,
nukelem and please leave us a review on iTunes. I'd
also like to take just a second to thank Phil
Taylor of Meat Eater. He works with heart and precision
on the audio production side of Bear Grease.

Speaker 4 (01:06:14):
This thing wouldn't be what it is without Phil.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
I look forward to talking with all the folks on
the Render next week and hearing what mischief Brent Reeves
is up to on the This Country Life podcast.