David Crockett: The Lion of the West

by Michael Wallis

  “When I got out fairly on the river, I would have given the world, if it had belonged to me, to have been back on shore,”19 Crockett recalled of that treacherous crossing. “But there was no time to lose now, so I just determined to do the best I could, and the devil take the hindside.” After much struggle, he was able to turn the canoe into the swift waters and then paddled with all his might upstream for about two miles until the current carried him across. “When I struck land, my canoe was about half full of water, and I was as wet as a drowned rat. But I was so much rejoiced, that I scarcely felt the cold, though my clothes were frozen on me.”

  Desperate to get warm, Crockett had to hike at least three miles before coming to a house where he could find comfort and dry his frozen clothing by the fire. The youngster also accepted a quaff of spirits, or, as he explained, “I took ‘a leetle of the creator [critter],’—that warmer of the cold, and cooler of the hot—and it made me feel so good that I concluded it was like the negro’s rabbit, ‘good any way.’”20 After the river crossing, Crockett proceeded home to Tennessee. While passing through Sullivan County, he was surprised to find his brother, who had gone with him so long before, at the start of the Cheek cattle drive. After a good visit and rest, Crockett left on the final leg of his journey.

  He arrived at the Crockett Tavern late one evening. There were several wagons pulled up and what appeared to be a considerable company of guests inside. Instead of bursting through the door, David simply inquired if there was an empty bed for him. It was assumed that he was another paying guest, and he was told that he could stay the night. He found a place on a bench and spoke as little as possible. “I had been gone so long, and had grown so much, that the family did not at first know me,” Crockett wrote. “And another, and perhaps a stronger reason was, they had no thought or expectation of me, for they all long had given me up for lost.”21

  At last everyone was called to supper. David joined the family and other guests at the long table. In only an instant the new tavern guest was identified. David’s sister Betsy had been staring at him ever since his arrival. Suddenly she sprang to her feet and ran to his side. The ecstatic girl seized David around the neck and exclaimed, “Here is my lost brother!”22 Almost thirty-four years later, when working with Thomas Chilton on the Narrative, Crockett had trouble describing his exact feelings at that moment.

  “The joy of my sisters and my mother, and indeed of all the family, was such that it humbled me, and made me sorry that I hadn’t submitted to a hundred whippings, sooner than cause so much affliction as they had suffered on my account.” Crockett also noted, probably with a sly grin, that due to his increased age and enhanced size at the time of his homecoming, “together with the joy of my father, occasioned by my unexpected return,” there would not be any more dreaded whippings. He was right.

  NINE

  RISE ABOVE

  LIKE A PRODIGAL SON finally forgiven, Crockett entertained his family with many tales of the high and low adventure he had experienced during his long sojourn. He spoke of the people he encountered and places he saw. He told about being broke and being flush, nights spent sleeping in barn lofts, runaway horses, great sailing ships that beckoned, and of times bitter and times sweet. He talked of the kindness of strangers and the cruelty of those he thought were friends. As the stories unfolded, everyone clearly saw that at almost sixteen years of age, the young man had grown in stature and muscle, and strengthened his resolve and character. Crockett had proven his manhood, an unwritten but understood obligation for frontier males.

  David was barely thirteen years old when he left his home in east Tennessee. Two and a half years on his own had exposed the young man to different people and places. Important life lessons had inevitably been learned. “He left his home a novice in the ways of the world but returned a person who understood considerably more about himself—what he wanted and what he valued,” writes Joseph Swann. “He was beginning to rise above his circumstances against great odds.”1

  The same could not be said for David’s father. Each time John Crockett attempted to rise above his lot in life, the odds overwhelmed him. Debt remained the Crockett family’s cornerstone and hounded its patriarch like a cur dog pack pursuing a bear. The Crockett Tavern offered only meager accommodations, suitable for wagoners and wanderers but a cut below the more comfortable inns and roadhouses of the day. No doubt Elizabeth and her girls prepared tasty meals, kept the place neat and clean, and made sure the bed ticking stuffed with dried leaves was free of lice and other vermin. Still, the charges for food, drink, and lodging were low in east Tennessee due to a legal ruling in 1800 that froze most fees that taverns were allowed to charge. With the price of meals set at no more than ten cents, a night’s lodging six cents, fodder and good pasture for wagon teams six cents, and half-pints of brandy, whiskey, and rum also just six cents, it was difficult to turn a profit.2 Glad as he was to be back in the fold, David had to have known what was apparent to others—that while he may have changed, his family’s fortunes had not.

  In the spring of 1802, not long after David returned home, his father came to him seeking help. Prone to drink, John told his teenaged son that once more he found himself in a financial bind that even an ocean of hard cider could not wash away. During David’s absence, his father continued to buy on credit and had run up more debts, including one that was long past due for thirty-six dollars to Abraham Wilson, a resident of the Panther Springs community.3 With the industrious David back on the scene, John saw an opportunity. He proposed that David hire out to Wilson and work off the outstanding debt. In return, David would be released from ever having to turn any of his future earnings over to his father, as was the custom of the day for all minors. The proposition appealed to David and he quickly agreed.

  Wasting no time, David immediately went to Panther Springs to meet with Wilson. The arrangement between them called for six months of labor; in exchange, John Crockett’s note would be fully forgiven. David would be working at a range of tasks for approximately six dollars a month, which broke down to twenty cents a day in wages, or the cost for a full pint of tavern wine. The thought of being free of his father’s strict parental control was a powerful incentive.

  “I set in, and worked with all my might, not losing a single day in six months,” Crockett reported in his autobiography. “When my time was out, I got my father’s note, and then declined working with the man [Abraham Wilson] any longer, though he wanted to hire me badly. The reason was, it was a place where a heap of bad company met to drink and gamble, and I wanted to get away from them, for I know’d very well if I staid there, I should get a bad name, as nobody could be respectable that would live there.”4

  When his son delivered the paid-off note, John Crockett was genuinely pleased. As David later reflected, “Though he was poor, he was an honest man, and always tried mighty hard to pay off his debts.” What he failed to mention, however, was that often John had his own children do the heavy lifting for him.

  As soon as his work for Abraham Wilson ended, David found employment with John Canaday, a man who would come to have a major impact on Crockett but who for 150 years went unnamed in all published works, or was inaccurately identified as John Kennedy.5 The problem with the Canaday surname mostly stemmed from Crockett’s own Narrative, in which he phonetically spelled the name Kennedy, based on the pronunciation: accented on the first syllable, with the second a silent. It was likely that David’s Ulster ear caused him to hear the name as Kennedy, a common variation of Canaday. Of interest, but puzzling, are Tennessee land records that posted the name as John Kennedy, while tax lists used the correct spelling. The Canaday clan—having spelled their name in a variety of ways, including Canady, Cannaday, and Kennedy—answered to any of them.6

  The Canadays were a Quaker family, all members in good standing of the Society of Friends. John Canaday, born in Prince George County, Maryland, in 1741, and his wife, Margaret Thornbrough Canaday, born in 1744 and a native of Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, met and married in 1764 in Rowan County, North Carolina, where both their families had settled.7 In 1796, the Canadays migrated to the new state of Tennessee accompanied by three of their grown sons, joined later by their daughter and three other sons. All of them settled in Jefferson County and affiliated with the recently formed Lost Creek Monthly Meeting, only the second Friends meetinghouse in Tennessee.8 Lost Creek became a thriving center of Quaker life and worship and had a profound influence in East Tennessee history and culture during the antebellum years. Quakers recognized the evils of slave ownership and by the late 1780s had freed their slaves. If a Quaker farmer needed work done he relied on his family or else employed laborers.

  After hearing that the many Quakers residing in the area “were remarkable for their kindness,” the notion of working on the tidy Canaday farm appealed to Crockett.9 At their first meeting Canaday hired the strapping lad for two shillings a day, provided that after a week’s trial the young man’s work proved satisfactory. At week’s end, Canaday, or the “honest old Quaker,” as Crockett referred to him, announced that he was pleased with Crockett’s work ethic. Then the shrewd farmer informed David that he held a note on John Crockett in the sum of forty dollars. Canaday further explained that the note would be surrendered if David paid it off by working for him for six months. It has been surmised that Canaday owned the property where the Crockett Tavern operated and that the outstanding debt resulted from back rent that John owed.10

  “I was certain enough that I should never get any part of the note,” Crockett wrote. “But then I remembered it was my father that owed it, and I concluded it was my duty as a child to help him along, and ease his lot as much as I could. I told the Quaker I would take him up on his offer, and immediately went to work.”11

  For six months, he labored as hard as any field hand in Tennessee for Canaday, who, in turn, provided David with quarters and meals at the Canaday home. The Canadays treated David like one of their own. “I never visited my father’s house during the whole time of this engagement, though he lived only fifteen miles off. 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.”

  Presently, David took the newly redeemed note from inside his shirt and handed it to his father, who, upon seeing it, straightaway thought Canaday had sent it for collection. John “looked mighty sorry” and told his son that he did not have the money to pay off the note and was not sure what he should do. “I then told him I had paid it for him, and it was then his own; that it was not presented for collection, but as a present from me. At this, he shed a heap of tears; and as soon as he got over it, he said he was sorry he couldn’t give me any thing. But he was not able, he was too poor.”12

  Seeing his father sob, receiving finally some heartfelt gratitude for what he had done without being asked, proved payback in itself for David. For two backbreaking terms of servitude over the course of a year, David had voluntarily worked without any personal income to clear his father’s due notes. Now the ledger between them was finally wiped clean, and David had some options to weigh. Just after the emotional scene with his grateful father, David made up his mind about how to proceed. “The next day, I went back to my old friend, the Quaker, and set in to work for him.”13

  For the next four years, until David was twenty years old and about to wed Polly Finley, he lived and worked for the Quakers on land they bought at the headwaters of Panther Creek, near the community of Panther Springs.14 David’s time with the Canadays was time very well spent. During those years he became literate and received the only formal schooling he ever had, excluding the few hectic days spent in Kitchen’s subscription school years earlier. David also found a true role model and enduring friend in John Canaday, who proved a counterbalance to his father. “The influence of John Canaday on David was profound,” according to Crockett historian Joseph Swann. “Although David continued to do many things of which Canaday did not approve, they both evidently thought enough of each other to be sensitive and tolerant. John Canaday was a father figure for David—one quite different from his natural father. John Canaday’s influence on David’s character development, in those formative years, should not be underestimated.”15

  On the surface it appeared that the aging Quaker farmer and the upstart young man had little in common. Unlike the Canadays, the Crocketts seemed to avoid taking part in organized religion, even though it is likely that David’s mother was the “Rebecca Crocit” who, with eight others, was baptized at the Bent Creek Baptist Church on a cold February morning in 1803.16 It also could be assumed that, given their strong Scots-Irish bloodlines, both sides of the Crockett family had, at one time, ties with the Presbyterians. There was a marked difference between the culture and lifestyle of the Quakers and the Ulster Scots. Beyond the wide cultural gap between David and his mentor, there was also a generational gap of forty-five years that had to be overcome.

  Canaday had to have seen qualities in Crockett that made the effort to befriend and help the young man worthwhile. One can only assume that John Crockett’s dire straits acted as a countervailing influence on his son, who had no wish to emulate his father. David’s irrepressible passion for life and yearning to better his state continually drove him in the right direction. Instead of taking the path of least resistance, however, he almost always chose the difficult route. He firmly believed that in the long run it was the wisest course to follow.

  TEN

  LOVESICK

  AS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY emerged into being, an astute Virginian took the helm of a fledgling nation that had been born of revolution and now was eager to expand. Many eyes were fast turning westward toward a vast and uncharted continent, not least of those the new president, Thomas Jefferson. Restless frontiersmen set out to clear the wilderness, conquer native tribes, and exploit the land’s wealth of resources. They also unknowingly supplied ample infusions of romance into the American myth. At the vanguard were Scots-Irish descended from Ulster forefathers. They became the first settlers to call themselves Americans.

  David Crockett was steadily evolving into one of those high-spirited Americans. Like the developing nation, he, too, continually grew stronger and more self-confident. Much of his positive attitude came from being gainfully employed from age sixteen to twenty by John Canaday. After going to work on the Canaday farm, one of David’s immediate goals was to purchase a new wardrobe to replace his few clothes, which, as he described them, were “nearly all worn out,” and “mighty indifferent.”1

  A logical reason for Crockett’s desire to improve his appearance resulted from his growing interest in the opposite sex. Whether or not Crockett enjoyed any amorous adventures when he trekked around the countryside is unknown. Back home, the young man’s dark good looks and muscular frame had to have appealed to the young women living in the area. Likewise, those same women most certainly caught the eye of Crockett.

  The possibility of romance came David’s way in the summer of 1803, two months into his long term of service for the Canaday clan. David was love-struck by the arrival of Amy Summer, a nineteen-year-old visiting the Canadays from her home in Surry County, North Carolina. Amy’s father was a half-brother to John Canaday, making her his half-niece. She also was a Quaker and, back in North Carolina, part of the Westfield Monthly Meeting of Friends.2 Even with all his self-assurance, David became tongue-tied whenever he thought about sharing his true feelings with Amy.

  For though I have heard people talk about hard loving, yet I reckon no poor devil in this world was ever cursed with such hard luck as mine has always been, when it came over me. I soon found myself head over heels in love with this girl…and I thought that if all the hills about there were pure chink, and all belonged to me, I would give them if I could just talk to her as I wanted to; but I was afraid to begin, for when I think of saying anything to her, my heart would begin to flutter like a duck in a puddle; and if I tried to outdo it and speak, it would get rig
ht smack up in my throat, and choak me like a cold potatoe.3

  After a few false starts, Crockett finally mustered the gumption to approach Amy. “I told her how well I loved her; that she was the darling object of my soul and body; and I must have her, or else I should pine down to nothing, and just die away with the consumption.”4

  Apparently, the young woman was not taken aback by David’s sudden admission of love. However, she was “an honest girl, and didn’t want to deceive anybody,” and her response was not what Crockett sought or expected: she explained that she was already spoken for and was engaged to marry her first cousin, Robert Canaday, the youngest son of Crockett’s employer. David was shattered. “This news was worse to me than war, pestilence, or famine; but still I knowed I could not help myself. I saw quick enough my cake was dough, and I tried to cool off as fast as possible; but I had hardly safety pipes enough, as my love was so hot as mighty nigh to burst my boilers. But I didn’t press my claims any more, seeing there was no chance to do any thing.”5

  Fortunately, those vanquished expressions did no lasting harm to the anguished seventeen-year-old. Having mastered the woods, he was both resilient and insightful. He analytically pondered his failure to win Amy’s heart, and concluded that it was going to take more than fresh trousers and shirts to achieve any success in love or, for that matter, in life. “I began now to think, that all my misfortunes growed out of my want of learning,” mused Crockett. “I had never been to school but four days…and did not yet know a letter.”6

  One of the married Canadays lived a mile away and had opened a school in his home. Crockett was able to strike an arrangement with the Canadays allowing him to attend school for four days and then work on the family farm for two days to pay for his learning and board.7 On the seventh day, David, like everyone else, followed God’s lead and rested.