8.21.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and to
day I will be reading content from smithsonianmag dot com.
As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading service intended
for people who are blind or have other disabilities that
make it difficult to read printed material. Please join me
now for the first article titled how Davy Crockett, the

(00:23):
rugged frontiersman killed at the Alamo, became an unlikely American hero.
During his lifetime, Crockett, who went by David not Davy,
shaped his own myth in the twentieth century. His legacy
got a boost from none other than Walt Disney by
Greg Dougherty. When David Crockett died at the Battle of

(00:45):
the Alamo in eighteen thirty six, he was already as
much of a myth as a man known to Americans
far and wide as Davy, a name he rarely, if
ever used. He was celebrated as a peerless hunter and
fearless fighter, the embodiment of the nation's rugged, pioneering spirit.
Everything about him, including his death, was mythologized, says Michael Wallace,

(01:09):
author of the twenty eleven biography David Crockett The Lion
of the West, and he had a lot to do
with creating a mythology himself. He was a wonderful down
home country boy story teller. By the time of his
death at age forty nine, Crockett had inspired at least
one anonymously authored biography, been satirized in a hugely popular

(01:32):
stage play, served three terms in Conquress, and was even
touted as a possible presidential candidate. The myth continued to
grow after Crockett's death, including the legend that he'd killed
his first bear at age three, an unlikely childhood milestone,
although he would eventually slay hundreds of the animals. In

(01:53):
the mid nineteen fifties, he became a hero to millions
of young baby boomers thanks to a glamorized betrayal on
a Walt Disney TV show in its hit themed song,
The Ballad of Davy Crockett. At the same time, skeptics
weighed in, calling him a braggart, a drunk, and a
wildly inappropriate role model for America's youth. Historians have now

(02:15):
spent the better part of two centuries trying to disentangle
the man from the myth, often disagreeing about which was which.
In fact, even the precise circumstances of Crockett's death remained
shrouded in mystery to this day. The lyrics of the
Ballad of Davy Crockett may have convinced generations that their

(02:35):
hero was born on a mountain top in Tennessee, but
his actual birthplace was on lower ground near the Knallachucky
River in what was then known as the state of
Franklin and would only later become part of Tennessee. The
date was August seventeenth, seventeen eighty six, three years after
the end of the American Revolution. When the new nation

(02:57):
consisted of just thirteen states and stretched no farther west
than the Mississippi River, it truly was the American frontier.
In seventeen eighty four, North Carolina ceded some of its
western lands, now part of Tennessee, to the federal government.
Residents of these remote counties campaigned to establish the new

(03:18):
state of Franklin, but they failed to gather enough Congressional
support to secure statehood. Despite this setback, the State of
Franklin endured operating as an independent entity until seventeen eighty nine,
when its counties rejoined North Carolina. Crockett was the fifth
of six sons among nine total children born to John

(03:41):
and Rebecca Crockett. As my father was very poor, and
living as he did far back in the backwoods, he
had neither the means nor the opportunity to give me
or any of the rest of his children any learning,
Crockett wrote in his Folkesy eighteen thirty four autobiography. By
his own account, he spent just four days in a

(04:02):
class room. Crockett's father was a farmer and tavern owner,
and not very successful at either. The family moved often
and was constantly in debt. As a boy, Crockett spent
much of his time working on neighboring farms to help
pay off his father's debts, as did his siblings. Married

(04:22):
just before he turned twenty, Crockett also tried his hand
at farming, but proved better at providing for his family
as a hunter, particularly of bears, which he'd track with
the pack of dogs and finish off with a rifle.
He'd then butcher the animal in the field and bring
its meat home to cure in his smoke house. Supposedly,

(04:42):
the choicest cuts from bear came from the paws and thighs,
Although cured side meat and the spare ribs of young
bears also were favored Wallace Wright's in his biography. In
eighteen thirteen, Crockett joined one of the Tennessee militias that
was forming to a unless slaughter of at least two
hundred and fifty settlers at Fort Mims in what is

(05:05):
now Alabama by a faction of the Creek Nation under
the command of future American President Andrew Jackson. The militiamen
descended on the Creek village of Taleshachi, killing close to
two hundred Creek warriors, women and children. In his autobiography,
Crockett recalled seeing a Creek woman shoot an arrow from

(05:26):
the doorway of a house where a group of warriors
had taken refuge, killing a militia lieutenant. The woman had
at least twenty balls blown through her, he wrote, we
now shot them like dogs, and then set the house
on fire and burned it up with the forty six
warriors in it. After the end of the Creek War
in eighteen fourteen, Crockett returned to farming and hunting and

(05:50):
made his first bids for elected office, serving variously as
an officer in the militia whose leaders were voted in
by their men, a justice of the peace and a
town commissioner. In eighteen twenty one, he won a seat
in Tennessee's state legislature. Setting his sights higher, he ran

(06:10):
for the United States House of Representatives, losing on his
first try but winning a seat in eighteen twenty seven.
Already nationally known, Crockett became a colorful and highly quotable
figure in Congress, burnishing his reputation as a man of
the people. Although he never managed to get a single
piece of legislation passed, Crockett revealed himself to be a

(06:33):
champion of the poor and disadvantaged, consistently voting for or
introducing proposals to protect them from laws he felt were
unjust or discriminatory. Mark Durr wrote in his nineteen ninety
three biography The Frontiersman, the Real Life and the Many
Legends of Davy Crockett. While political adversaries caricatured Crockett as

(06:55):
a backwoods buffoon who wore a coonskin cap and hunting
garb on the house floor, more objective witnesses said he
dressed as formally as anyone else. In fact, Wallace and
other biographers maintained that Crockett rarely wore a coonskin cap anywhere,
and only started donning one late in life, after the
public had come to expect it. Crockett also became a

(07:19):
leading critic of his old commander Jackson, who'd assumed the
presidency in eighteen twenty nine. Despite his own reputation as
a former Indian fighter, Crockett believed that Jackson's eighteen thirty
Indian Removal Act treated Native American tribes too harshly, calling
it oppression with the vengeance the Act claimed to relocate

(07:40):
the tribes from their lands in the eastern US to
territory west of the Mississippi River. Willingly or otherwise, Crockett's
stance would cost him his eighteen thirty one reelection bid,
though he retook his seat two years later. Crockett's opposition
to Jackson, as well as his national name or recognition,

(08:01):
led the recently formed Whig Party to urge him to
run for president on its ticket in the upcoming eighteen
thirty six election. Crockett campaigned briefly, but ultimately yielded his
spot to three other Whigs, including future President William Henry
Harrison and future Secretary of State Daniel Webster. They all

(08:22):
lost to the Democratic Party candidate Martin Van Buren. Meanwhile,
Crockett lost another bid for re election to Congress, leaving
office for good in March eighteen thirty five. Later that year,
partly at the urging of his friend and fellow Tennessee
politician Sam Houston, he headed to Texas for a fresh start.

(08:43):
I told the people of my district that if they
saw fit to reelect me, I would serve them as
faithfully as I had done, Crockett reportedly told a crowd
shortly after his arrival. But if not, they might go
to Hell, and I would go to Texas. I was beaten, gentlemen,
and here I am. At the time, Texas was fighting
to gain its independence from the Mexican Republic. The promise

(09:06):
of cheap and abundant land had drawn so many settlers
from across the U. S Border that the Mexican government
banned further emigration to Texas in eighteen thirty Disputes between
settlers and government officials finally erupted into the Texas Revolution
in October eighteen thirty five. The Mexican army's attempts to

(09:27):
subdue the revolutionaries, led to several violent clashes, most famously
the thirteen day Siege of the Alamo in San Antonio
in February and March eighteen thirty six. It was at
the Alamo that Crockett met his end on March sixth,
eighteen thirty six, adding a mysterious concluding chapter to his myth.

(09:49):
In many newspaper accounts, he went down fighting. The Arkansas Advocate,
for example, reported that he shot twenty three Mexican soldiers
before dying, with the butcher knife in one hand and
the remnants of his broken rifle in the other, presumably
after swinging it like a club. Both weapons, the paper added,

(10:09):
were bathed in the blood of his enemies. Other papers,
such as the Vermont Telegraph, suggested that he and several
other men had attempted to surrender, but the Mexicans refused
and made them fight to the death anyway, after which
their bodies were thrown into a heap and burned. One
slightly later report, apparently originating in a Texas newspaper, claimed

(10:33):
the men had surrendered and been taken as prisoners of war,
only to be executed on the orders of Mexican General
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. While that version of events
might have undermined the legend of Crockett's heroism, it also
made the Mexican's actions seem all the more reprehensible. Remember,

(10:54):
the Alamo became the rallying cry of the revolution, which
ended in April eighteen thirty six, when troops under Crockett's
friend Houston forced the Mexican army to retreat south of
the Rio Grande. Crockett's tragic death gave his myth new life.
While he might have otherwise been written off by history

(11:15):
as a washed up politician and relic of an earlier time,
he was now a bonified martyr, at least from the
American perspective. Mexicans might have thought otherwise. A series of
publications called Crockett Almanacs, first printed in eighteen thirty five,
continued until eighteen fifty six, chronicling the fallen hero's colorful adventures,

(11:39):
both real and imagined, for a new generation a century later,
starting in December nineteen fifty four, Crockett's life received the
Disney treatment in a five episode TV series that branded
him the King of the Wild Frontier. Crockett was portrayed
by Fesk Parker, a lanky young actor, completely with his rifle,

(12:00):
Old Betsy, and of course, a coonskin cap. Parker would
later play Crockett's contemporary, Daniel Boone, also in a coonskin
cap in a nineteen sixty four TV series, resulting in
a lot of confusion regarding the two frontiersmen. The Crockett
series became an unheard of hit, driven almost entirely by

(12:22):
elementary students and preschoolers, the first hint of the cultural
power that the baby boomer generation, whose oldest members were
barely ten at that point, would wield for decades to come.
Coonskin caps became the male boomer's first fashion craze, leading
to a spike in the price of raccoon pelts, although
most of the hats were made from fau fur. Director

(12:46):
Steven Spielberg recalled being chased home from school in the
third grade by a mob of classmates because his parents
hadn't bought him a coonskin cap, yet, not wanting to
ignore the other half of the youthful population, or failed
to cash in on them, many stores also offered a
polycrocket hat named after Crockett's first wife by one estimate,

(13:10):
some three thousand different Crocket related products filled the stores
in nineteen fifty five, selling more than one hundred million
dollars worth of merchandise in a matter of months. A
child with indulgent parents could dress like Davy from head
to toe, heat breakfast from a Crockett cereal bowl, go
off to school with a Crockett lunch box, and then

(13:30):
come home to play with a cap firing Old Betsy
Frontier rifle. The TV show's theme song yielded multiple hit records,
three of which were in the top ten at the
same time. All of this adulation became too much for
some adults, who considered Crockett about as bad a role
model for America's youth as could be found. Murray Kempton,

(13:53):
a popular newspaper journalist of the day, devoted four separate
columns to debunking just about every positive aspect of the
Crockett legend. Harper's Magazine called him a juvenile delinquent who
deserted his wife and children, weaseled his way out of
the army, and did everything he possibly could to avoid

(14:14):
an honest day's work. He never was king of anything,
the magazine added, except maybe the Tennessee Tall Tales and
Bourbon Samplers Association. In fact, whether Crockett actually deserted his
family is debatable. Wallace notes in his biography that the
frontiersman's second wife, Elizabeth, took their children and moved out

(14:35):
of their home to live with relatives no longer able
to tolerate all the hunting, excessive drinking, and his chronic
pattern of abandoning his family. The charge that he'd weaseled
his way out of the army refers to his paying
a young neighbor to serve as a substitute and finish
out the final month of his enlistment, a fairly common

(14:56):
practice at the time. As to Crockett's post that he'd
once killed one hundred and five bears and less than
a year, Harper's scoffed that his fellow tipplers refused to
believe a word of it, on the sensible grounds that
Davy couldn't count that high, but others rushed to Crockett's defense.
Crockett has made it popular to be an American again.

(15:19):
The television comedian Red Skelton told a reporter, adding, to
see our children laugh, to see ourselves laugh with our children,
because of the Davy Crockett craze is one of the
greatest forces for good this country has had in years.
The Chamber of Commerce in San Antonio, home of the Alamo,
declared a week long birthday celebration in Crockett's honor, and

(15:42):
invited the editor of Harper's to attend. A congressman from Tennessee,
Crockett's home state, introduced a bill to install a statue
of him in the U. S. Capitol. Unfortunately, the state's
two allotted slots were already taken, one of them by
crockett nemesis Jackson. If Crockett's modern fame peaked in the

(16:03):
nineteen fifties, he was far from forgotten thereafter. John Wayne
donned a Coonskin cap to play him in the nineteen
sixty epoch The Alamo. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wayne's Crockett doesn't surrender
and isn't captured. Instead, after being mortally wounded, he tosses
his torch into a powder magazine, blowing himself and much

(16:26):
of the Alamo to smithereens. In nineteen eighty eight, Disney
produced another mini series, The New Adventures of Davy Crockett,
with Johnny Cash portraying the frontiersman in later life. As
recently as twenty twenty four, Crockett was back on the
big screen in the movie The Ballad of Davy Crockett. Today,

(16:48):
visitors to Disneyland in California can paddle one of Davy
Crockett's Explorer canoes, while those at Disney World in Florida
can enjoy a glass of fest Parker, Reasling or Frontier
red at Crockett's tavern. Vacationers at Disneyland Paris can book
lodging at Disney Davy Crockett Ranch and shop at the

(17:10):
Alamo Trading Post. Monuments to Crockett dot the U S,
particularly in Texas and Tennessee. His name is on schools,
a state park, a national forest, and even a nuclear
rocket launcher. Since retired, tasty tributes to him include a
Crockett sandwich, a Crockett cocktail, and Crockett dessert bars. Meanwhile,

(17:33):
if President Donald Trump's proposed National Garden of American Heroes
goes according to plan, Crockett will be among the honorees,
represented life size in marble, granite, bronze, copper, or brass.
Just in time for the U S's two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary celebration in July twenty twenty six. Next before

(17:56):
wales took to the sea, these ten species walked on land.
By Riley Black, Science Correspondent, The story of whales did
not begin in the seas. For millions of years before
beasts like the sinuous Bascillosaurus lived full time in the ocean,
the shorelines and estuaries of prehistoric Earth were filled with

(18:17):
amphibious whales that more closely resembled otters and crocodiles than humpbacks.
The first whales walked. Paleontologists have been pondering whale origins
since the late nineteenth century. They knew that whales evolved
from land dwelling ancestors because of vestiges of hind limbs
sometimes found in whale skeletons and other anatomical clues held

(18:41):
in common with terrestrial mammals. Who those ancestors were and
how the transcendent evolutionary change from land to water occurred
was unclear, But since the nineteen seventies, paleontologists have found
a vast array of early whales. The fossil fine have
indicated that whales are artiodactyls, members of the hoofed mammal

(19:05):
group that includes hippoes and cows, and that aquatic whales
as we know them represent one offshoot of a diverse
array of early semi aquatic whales that evolved in the shallows.
This list offers a fossil highlight reel of some of
these beasts, Pacacidus. If you were to visit the shores

(19:26):
of prehistoric Pakistan about fifty million years ago, you might
see a vaguely dog like mammal trotting along the sand.
The labrador retriever sized creature was Pacacidus, one of the
earliest known whales. At a glance, Pacacidus doesn't look like
it would be able to do much more than doggy paddle,
but at least two features indicate that this early whale

(19:49):
spent a significant amount of its time swimming. The eyes
of pacacidas are relatively high on the mammal's head, similar
to alligators and crocodiles that peak their eyes and noses
out of the water to watch the shore. More importantly,
the bones of pacacidas are relatively dense, a condition paleontologists

(20:09):
snow as osteosclerosis. The bones of Pacacidus, in other words,
were a little heavier than those of other mammals of
comparable size, and acted as a ballast to help the
carnivore achieve neutral buoyancy in the water and put more
energy towards swimming than staying submerged. Next itch Thiolistes. Paleontologists

(20:33):
began finding early whales before they knew what they were
looking at. In nineteen fifty eight, paleontologists studying fossil teeth
found in the fifty million year old rock around Gondakas, Pakistan,
thought that the choppers were unusual enough to signify a
previously unknown fossil mammal they called itch Thiolistes the fish thief.

(20:56):
Further explorations in the area eventually turned up more parts
of the Ichthiolistes skeleton, and by the twenty first century,
the animals was recognized as a fox size relative of Pacacidas.
The early whales still had hips fuse to the spine
and ankle bones that looked like those of its land
dwelling relatives, but its bones were so dense that running

(21:20):
fast on land would have risked breaking them. Like its
close relatives, Ichthiolistes lived around river mouths and estuaries, perhaps
pushing off the bottom of shallow bodies of water as
it searched for fish to eat. Next Ambulocetus. Of all
the early whales uncovered by paleontologists, none has a toothy

(21:43):
grin quite like Ambulocetus. The forty eight million year old
whale had a long snout full of sharp, bladelike teeth,
well suited to nabbing fish and perhaps grabbing unwary small
creatures from the shores of prehistoric Pakistans estuaries. Ambulocetus was
a much stronger swimmer than its predecessors, like Pacacetus, The

(22:07):
mammal's body is much more otter like, and palaeontologists expect
that Ambulocytus swam by undulating its spine up and down
while using its paddle like hind feet for an extra push.
This swim stroke was a predecessor to the way modern
whales flick their broad tail flukes up and down to
push themselves through the water while on land. Ambulocidas could

(22:31):
support its own weight on its limbs, but was not
a runner like a wolf. The large broad feet of
Ambulocetus hint that it moved more like an otter or
sea lion on land than its terrestrial ancestors, next Cuchacitas.
Early whale evolution is not a simple story of mammals

(22:53):
that became better and better adapted to life in the water,
rather than a straight line of progress. The oldest part
of the whale family tree as many different branches representing
forms that were quite at home living between land and water.
Among them is the forty six million year old Cuchasidas.
Like many early whales, Cuchacidas was a roughly wolf sized

(23:16):
animal that lived in brackish habitats along shores of what
is now India and Pakistan. Its snout is exceptionally long
and shallow, good for snapping quickly at slippery prey. Based
on the mammals limbs and hips, paleontologists think Cuchacidas could
still support its weight on land, but lived much as

(23:37):
otters do, undulating in the water in search of small
morsels before coming out of the prehistoric pool to warm
its fur in the sun. Myacetas adapting to life at
sea required more of early whales than shifting their swimming techniques.
All modern whales give birth at sea. Their offspring emerging

(23:59):
into the world whale first to help prevent them from drowning,
as a head first berth would risk. When this shift
happened is unclear, but the skeleton of the mother whale myacetus,
indicates that it was after forty seven point five million
years ago. Myacetus was more adept in the water than

(24:19):
earlier whales, Its spine was flexible for up and down
swimming motions, and its digits were flatter, implying webbing in life.
But one specimen included what has been interpreted as a
fetus in a position that suggests it would have been
born head first on land. Even as whales were becoming
better and better swimmers, they still had to return to

(24:41):
land to give birth Fio mycetas The coasts of what
are now Pakistan and India were a crucial place for
whale origins. The earliest whales and their ancestors are found
there in rocks more than fifty million years ago, but
by about forty three million years ago, whales were straying
farther and farther from familiar shores. Piomycetus from Egypt marks

(25:06):
the early days of when whales began spreading throughout Earth's
marine realm. In life, Piomycetus would have been about ten
feet long. On land, the whale could walk, but only
in an awkward and clumsy way, sticking close to the
water where it was more comfortable swimming, just as seals
stay close to the water to day. Like other related whales,

(25:29):
it had conical grabbing teeth towards the front of the
jaw and shearing teeth at the cheek, along with clewes
from the whale's skull that hit at strong muscle attachments.
Paleontologists think Phiomcetus had a powerful bite it relied upon
to prey upon sharks, turtles, and maybe other early whales.

(25:49):
Georgia Seatas whales began crossing oceans when they still had legs.
Fossils dating to about forty million years ago from the
southeastern United States leave no doubt. Georgia SETAs, first found
in Georgia, looks very similar to whales like miacetas found
in India and Pakistan, but must have crossed the ancient

(26:10):
Atlantic to get there. Like miacets, the seal size Georgia
SETAs belonged to an early whale group called protocetds. They
still had arms and legs with paddle like hands and feet,
but their spines had become more flexible to undulate and
push them through the water. So far as paleontologists can tell,

(26:30):
Georgia SETAs did not have a tail fluke like modern whales,
but was still a strong enough swimmer to cross vast
ocean distances. In fact, paleontologists have hypothesized that the hind
limbs of Georgia SETAs were no longer as important for
moving on land, as acting like rudders in the water.
The whale's hips only barely connected to the spine. If

(26:53):
future finds confirmed the notion, it may be that Georgia
asiatas spent little time, if any, on land and was
mostly aquatic while still having legs Paragocidas. Once early whales
were able to swim and survive in the open ocean,
they began spreading all over the world. Around the same

(27:15):
time as Georgia Asidas was swimming through the waters over
what's now the southeastern Us, the similar Paragocitus was living
along the coast of prehistoric Peru. So far, Paragocitus is
known from the partial skeleton of a single animal. The
bones showed that the hips of the animal could still

(27:36):
hold up the whale's weight on land. Yet, like seals
and sea lions, the living animal was likely more graceful
in the water than on land. Papacidas and Ageacidas are
the last two whale ancestors. This concludes readings from smithsonianmag
dot com. For today. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore.

(27:59):
Thank you for listening, and have a great day.