David Crockett: The Lion of the West

by Michael Wallis

  “The next morning, which was Sunday, the scene became really distressing; the wives and children of the poor Tories came in, in great numbers,” wrote James Collins, one of the backcountry patriots who took part in the battle.

  Their husbands, fathers, and brothers. Lay dead in heaps, while others lay wounded or dying; a melancholy sight indeed! We proceeded to bury the dead, but it was badly done; they were thrown into convenient piles and covered with old logs, the bark of trees, and rocks; yet not so as to secure them from becoming a prey to the beasts of the forest, or the vultures of the air; and the wolves became so plenty that it was dangerous for anyone to be out at night, for several miles around; also, the hogs in the neighborhood gathered into the place to devour the flesh of men.20

  The plunder of battle, including horses, guns, powder, and lead, was distributed to the victors. Articles of clothing also were taken from the dead Tories. The combat-hardened patriots had not forgotten British atrocities and their refusal to grant quarter to prisoners. As a result, at King’s Mountain, many captive enemy survivors were tortured, bayoneted, or hacked to death with sabers. Some were given cursory trials and several were hanged.

  “The overmountain men had proved their worth and had settled a long awaited score,” Joseph A. Swann said of King’s Mountain. “The battle was a testimony to the tough resourcefulness of the proud UlsterScots and the deadly accuracy of their long rifles. The superior range and accuracy of the rifles of the overmountain men had proved far superior to the heavier, smooth bored muskets used by the Tories.”

  Those frontier Scot pioneers were establishing a name for themselves as effective fighters and excellent marksmen—a reputation that David Crockett, as the son of one of the heroes of that battle, would take to a legendary level. On a larger level, this kind of brutal fighting, which often culminated in massacres, helped establish a martial precedent, one that challenged the traditional methods of warfare, and for which the nineteenth-century West would become known.

  FIVE

  ON THE NOLICHUCKY

  AFTER TAKING PART in the annihilation of the British and Tory forces at King’s Mountain, John Crockett and his brothers, fervently believing that God had ordained their victory, came home to Carter’s Valley, with the Overmountain Men’s war cry, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon,” still echoing in their ears.1 It was time to tend to family matters that had been put on hold while the war raged around them. It was time to begin the search for a deaf and mute brother being held captive by the Cherokees, as well as dispose of their murdered and scalped parents’ property.

  The Crockett brothers understood that they were not the only ones called upon to serve. “Every able bodied man in the county was required to go,” recalled Samuel Hill, a ranger whose family moved to the Nolichucky settlements at the outbreak of the Revolution.2 Militia duty meant serving multiple tours of anywhere from three to nine months at a time, which placed tremendous strains on relationships and left frontier families unprotected. Much like the Crocketts, another member of the militia came home to find his brother killed and his mother and two sisters taken captive by Indian raiders. After setting out with a pursuit party of neighbors, the man found his mother’s corpse “stripped naked, her head skinned.” He still managed to catch up with the war party and free his sisters.3

  Atrocities involving not only men, but also the victimizing of women and children were common and committed by both sides in the long series of Indian wars that continued after the American Revolution. Death at the hands of warring Indians was so common that when one was told a man or woman had died, one did not ask the cause but only how the person was killed. Undoubtedly the same question was raised in Cherokee villages when a death was announced. Retaliation and fear drove the brutality and violence. During the War for Independence, white militia sought to eliminate the Cherokee as a British ally and punish them for attacking white settlements. These punitive actions continued after the Revolutionary War and well into the 1800s, as more whites moved into Indian lands. Whites were killed and brutalized, as were Indian men, women, and children. Dozens of Cherokee villages were left in ruins, hundreds of acres of crops destroyed, and livestock killed or seized. Many of the white soldiers shouted the Indian scalp cry in battle and took as many scalps for trophies as the Indian warriors they fought.4 Indian captives were sold as slaves and white prisoners were held for ransom. It became a deadly cycle of vengeance. Tales of scalpings and atrocities were told and retold, feeding the fires of intolerance and cultural division. Yet some veterans of these outrages, among them John Crockett, preferred silence to bragging. For the remainder of his life, he spoke very little of his experiences as a frontier ranger, even with young sons anxious to hear every gory detail of combat against both the British and the Indians.

  “I have an imperfect recollection of the part which I have understood my father took in the revolutionary war,” David Crockett wrote in his autobiography of his father’s role in the War for Independence.

  I personally know nothing about it, for it happened to be a little before my day; but from himself, and many others who were well acquainted with its troubles and afflictions, I have learned that he was a soldier in the revolutionary war, and took part in that bloody struggle. He fought at Kings Mountain against the British and tories, and in some other engagements of which my remembrance is too imperfect to enable me to speak with any certainty.5

  John was spared a trip to the Washington County Courthouse in Abingdon, Virginia, when it came time for the disposition of his deceased parents’ estate. That task was left to his brothers William and Robert, who had been named administrators of their father’s last will and testament.6 Both of them acted as the legal guardians of their younger brothers when it came to putting four hundred acres of land in the names of “Alexander and James Crockett Orphans of David Crockett Decesd on the waters of the Holston on the head Waters of Black Creek including said Crockett Decesd Improvement.”7 The older brothers also arranged for the sale of their father’s other holdings in Carter’s Valley. In the inventory and appraisal of the estate were several horses, a small herd of yearling cattle and bulls, saddles and bridles, a wagon, a musket, plows and sickles, a spinning wheel, bedding and furniture, clothing including a man’s great coat, a bell, and kitchen utensils.8 It had to have been difficult for the Crockett siblings to sell off their slain parents’ personal belongings and the everyday objects that they had used as children, such as the saddles they learned to ride on and the muskets they fired when their father taught them how to shoot.

  Amid an assortment of tools and implements was found a hackle, a comblike tool through which raw hair was passed in preparation for the weaving that Elizabeth Crockett had done for many years. Like some of the other precious items, it was given to a family member in remembrance of the woman who helped raise all of them. There also was an unknown quantity of brimstone, or sulfur, one of the key ingredients, along with saltpeter and charcoal, used in the making of black powder.9 Most gunpowder came from England, and even though the 1777 ban on importation by the British Parliament was eventually lifted, it remained one of the most precious commodities on the frontier. Almost forty-five years later, the then adult David Crockett would try his hand at manufacturing gunpowder, an ill-fated venture.

  Yet despite the celebrated failures and mishaps that David Crockett may have had to endure during his life, he fared far better than did his father. Try as he might, it seemed that John Crockett was never quite able to improve his own life and livelihood. Some folks said that John was snake-bit, an old expression in the Shenandoah Valley and elsewhere for a person plagued with hard luck. “Poverty, as well as danger, was the birthright of the pioneer; and John Crockett inherited his full share of it,” observed historian James Shackford.10

  Still, by the spring of 1783, after the surrender at Saratoga and when Congress officially declared an end to the Revolutionary War, John and Rebecca Crockett, along with their growing brood of children, had already
moved on. They pulled up stakes in Carter’s Valley and relocated to Washington County, soon to become Greene County, North Carolina.11

  Traversed by a series of valleys and ridges, Greene County was situated between the Unaka Mountains on the south and Bays Mountains on the north. Rising as the confluence of the North Toe River and the Cane River in western North Carolina, the Nolichucky River—principal stream of Greene County—trended westward. Called the “Chucky River” by early settlers, the Nolichucky flanked ranges and cut between mountains as it flowed in a curving course, fed by tributaries such as Lick Creek, Horse Creek, and Camp Creek. At the border of Greene County, one of the larger tributaries, Big Limestone Creek, joined the river. It was here that the Crockett property was located, and it was here that David, the sixth of Rebecca and John Crockett’s nine children, was born, on August 17, 1786.12

  In the years just prior to David’s birth, it appeared that John’s fortunes had changed. In April 1783, he was appointed a constable in the newly formed county, establishing a family political tradition. He was to be reappointed in 1785 and 1789.13 Even though, as David put it in his autobiography, John was “by profession a farmer,” it seems he tried his hand at many tasks, and was a respected, moderately influential man in Greene County.

  John also took a stab at speculating in land when David was just ten months old, learning to walk in his family’s log house on the Nolichucky. On June 4, 1787, John sold the two hundred acres he had purchased four years earlier in Sullivan County for one hundred shillings for fifty pounds.14 At the time of the transaction, both John and Rebecca signed the bill of sale, which brought them virtually no profit, since one pound sterling was worth about twenty shillings.

  By the late 1780s, John was appointed a magistrate of Greene County. As a justice of the court, he was presiding on August 5, 1788, when the young and sinewy Andrew Jackson received his license to practice law in Greene County.15 John Crockett was also active politically, as a staunch Franklinite, one of the supporters of the State of Franklin, the independent state (1785–1789) established by frontier settlers.16

  After seceding from North Carolina, the rebellious settlers wrote their own constitution and elected as their governor the popular Revolutionary War hero and “Indian fighter” John Sevier, nicknamed Nolichucky Jack or Chucky Jack for his exploits along the Nolichucky River.17 Sometimes called “Frankland,” meaning “land of free men,” the new state was named after Benjamin Franklin, the aging patriot who told the Franklinites, only a few years before his death in what was then the nation’s capital, that he was honored to have a state named for him but politely explained that he was too old and sickly to be of much help in their cause.18 In a letter to Governor Sevier sent from Philadelphia in 1787, however, Franklin did offer a suggestion:

  There are two things which humanity induces me to wish you may succeed in: the accommodating your misunderstanding with the government of North-Carolina, and the avoiding an Indian war by preventing encroachments on their lands. Such encroachments are the more unjustifiable, as these people, in the fair way of purchase, usually give very good bargains.19

  Doctor Franklin’s sage advice was not taken.

  In August 1788, around the time of David’s second birthday, John and about eight hundred other area men embarked with Brigadier General Joseph Martin on an ill-fated campaign against Dragging Canoe, leader of the same Chickamaugas who massacred John’s parents and others back in Carter’s Valley.20 Martin was a Revolutionary War hero married to Betsy Ward, daughter of Nancy Ward, a prominent Cherokee leader, and her English trader husband. In 1777, Virginia Governor Patrick Henry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, appointed Martin the Indian agent for the Cherokee Nation. This particular action led by Martin was sparked by the recent massacres of more white families and cries for revenge that echoed throughout the land. The campaign was but one of many that took place during the almost twenty years of raids, ambushes, and sometimes full-scale battles between the Cherokees and the ever-growing number of American frontiersmen who illegally encroached into Indian lands.

  The various militias gathered at White’s Fort, where Knoxville now stands, and then crossed the Hiwassee River and moved overland to the point where the Tennessee River broke through the Cumberland Mountains.21 Scattered fighting ensued, but when the Chickamaugas offered unexpected resistance and Brig. Gen. Martin gave the order to pursue them, most of his men rebelled. They refused to follow because he had allied himself with the state of North Carolina during the contentious struggle over the failed State of Franklin, and hard feelings had developed between Martin and John Sevier, also a much-admired hero. Martin had no other choice but to go home.22

  A weary Martin resigned as Indian agent following the inglorious murder of several Cherokee leaders, including pacifist chief Old Tassel, killed while meeting under a flag of truce. The charismatic John Sevier, however, rode on to more glory even as all hope vanished for Franklin’s gaining admission to the United States. As Franklin and North Carolina competed for the loyalties of the people, Sevier stayed popular and beloved in many circles, based on his past exploits with the Watauga Association, the Battle of King’s Mountain, and his constant offensive against the Cherokee people. He managed to hang on even when the Cherokee, Chickamauga, and Chickasaw nations collectively began to fight back and attack the settlements in Franklin, causing an outcry for Franklinites to settle their differences with North Carolina so the state militia could come to their rescue.

  As Franklin began to collapse, Sevier became involved with some last-ditch intrigues to gain control of Indian lands and even considered an alliance with Spain. Eventually, some of his property was seized for back taxes, and Sevier was arrested on a charge of treason under North Carolina state law. In 1789 he received a pardon and won election to the North Carolina Senate. The following year, the State of Franklin was declared dead, and the land that soon became Tennessee was again ceded by North Carolina to the federal government. During the territorial period, Sevier went to the First U.S. Congress from North Carolina, and on June 1, 1796, when Tennessee joined the Union as the sixteenth state, Sevier was elected the first governor, an office he held for several terms.23

  By that date, the family of John Crockett had been gone from their cabin on the Nolichucky for almost four years. David was about nine years old when this move took place, and in writing in his Narrative later in life, he could vividly remember but one traumatic experience. After the passage of more than forty-five years, Crockett described what he witnessed as if it had just happened.

  My four elder brothers, and a well-grown boy of about fifteen years old, by the name of Campbell, and myself, were all playing on the river’s side; when all of the rest of them got into my father’s canoe, and put out to amuse themselves on the water, leaving me on the shore alone. Just a little distance below them, there was a fall in the river, which went slap-right straight down. My brothers, though they were little fellows, had been used to paddling the canoe, and could have carried it safely anywhere about there; but this fellow Campbell wouldn’t let them have the paddle, but, fool like, undertook to manage it himself. I reckon he had never seen a water craft before; and it went just any way but the way he wanted it. There he paddled, and paddled, and paddled—all the while going wrong,—until, in a short time, here they were going, straight forward, stern foremost, right plump to the falls; and if they had only a fair shake, they would have gone over as slick as a whistle. It was’ent this, thought, that scared me; for I was so infernal mad that they had left me on the shore, that I had as soon seen them all go over the falls a bit, as any other way. But their danger was seen by a man the name of Kendall, but I’ll be shot if it was Amos; for I believe I would know him yet if I was to see him. This man Kendall was working in a field on the bank, and knowing there was no time to lose, he started full tilt, and he come like a cane brake afire; and as he ran, he threw off his coat, and then his jacket, and then his shirt, for I know when he got to the water he
had nothing on but his breeches. But seeing him in such a hurry, and tearing off his clothes as he went, I had no doubt but that the devil or something else was after him—and close on him, too—as he was running within an inch of his life. This alarmed me, and I screamed out like a young painter [panther]. But Kendall didn’t stop for this. He went ahead all might, and as full bent on saving the boys…. When he came to the water he plunged in, and where it was too deep to wade he would swim, and where it was shallow enough he went bolting on; and by such exertion as I never saw at any other time in my life, he reached the canoe, when it was within twenty or thirty feet of the falls; and so great was the suck, and so swift the current, that poor Kendall had a hard time of it to stop them at last, as Amos will to stop the mouths of the people about his stockjobbing. But he hung on to the canoe, till he got it stop’d, and then draw’d it out of danger. When they got out, I found the boys were more scared than I had been, and the only thing that comforted me was, the belief that it was a punishment on them for leaving me on shore.24

  It is believed by the most conscientious Crockett researchers that this incident on the Nolichucky took place much as described by Crockett in his autobiography. The waterfall is documented in old deeds, and the Crockett account seems plausible. However, it is even more probable that, in this particular instance, Crockett purposely took some liberties with the name of the man who rescued the boys from certain death in the river. Amos Kendall was, in truth, not a Tennessee farmer but the close confidant and intellectual force behind the administration of President Andrew Jackson, who was dramatically elected president in November of 1828 and whose decidedly expansionist westward gaze anticipated the government’s Manifest Destiny policy by numerous decades. In the late 1820s and early 1830s, Kendall and Jackson were Crockett’s most bitter enemies and political rivals. Kendall not only served as U.S. Postmaster General under both Jackson and later Martin Van Buren but also wrote some of Jackson’s most important speeches.25