David Crockett: The Lion of the West

by Michael Wallis

The United States, as we understand,

  Took sick and did vomit the dregs of the land.

  Her murderers, bankrupts and rogues you may see,

  All congregated in San Felipe.

  More importantly, Smithwick also wrote of the colonists’ true motives for moving into the province and their decision to take the land away from Mexico. According to Smithwick, many of his fellow settlers were social outcasts and deadbeat exiles from the Mississippi Valley and across the southern states eager to acquire cheap land or get a new lease on life. “Faulty statutes in the United states sent many a man to Texas,” he wrote.9

  Smithwick also described wealthy landowners who established cotton plantations and imported large numbers of slaves. “Over on the Brazos…a planter from South Carolina…had over 100 slaves, with which force he set to work clearing ground and planting cotton and corn. He hired two men to kill game to feed them on, and the mustangs [wild horses] being the largest and easiest to kill…the negroes lived on horse meat till corn came in.”10

  Slavery was indeed an important issue in the Texas war of rebellion, just as it would be a decade later in the Mexican-American War. Yet because slavery is antithetical to hero worship, often the subject has been noticeably absent in discussions of early Texas settlement by Anglo immigrants. The fact remains that by the late 1820s Mexico had a politically active and strong abolitionist movement. In 1829 a new Mexican constitution prohibited slavery, which so outraged the big landowners and speculators in Texas that a provision was drafted that permitted slavery under certain conditions. That was soon rescinded and a new policy put into place. It allowed all slaves currently residing in Texas to remain but banned the importation of additional slaves. It also decreed that children born to slaves in the territory would be free. At the same time, the Mexican government passed a law blocking any further American immigration into Texas. By 1830 there were more than 20,000 settlers and 2,000 slaves living in Texas, making Anglos more numerous than Mexicans.

  The flood of immigrants was overwhelming, and brought even more problems. Many of the new arrivals disregarded the laws, refused to pay customs fees, and took part in illegal smuggling activities. This provoked a great outcry from Mexican newspapers and political leaders fearful that the white colonists would attempt a revolution. During a speech to a secret session of the Mexican congress in 1830, one political leader warned: “Mexicans! Watch closely, for you know all too well the Anglo-Saxon greed for territory. We have generously granted land to these Nordics; they have made their homes with us, but their hearts are with their native land. We are continually in civil wars and revolutions; we are weak, and know it—and they know it also. They may conspire with the United States to take Texas from us. From this time, be on your guard!”11

  The situation only worsened for the Mexican government. By 1835, the population had ballooned to 35,000, including 3,000 black slaves. All of this changed the very nature of the province. Most of the newcomers spoke only English, pretended to practice Catholicism, and “true to their manly Southern roots, kept slaves at a time when the peculiar institution had been abandoned by the rest of Mexico.”12

  That August, as Crockett was reeling from his election loss in Tennessee, Austin continued to press for not only a continuation of slavery but also for independence from Mexico. In a letter to his cousin, Mary Austin Holley, he wrote:

  The situation of Texas is daily becoming more and more interesting, so much so that I doubt whether the Government of the United States or that of Mexico can much longer look on with indifference, or inaction. It is very evident that Texas should be effectually, and fully, Americanized,—that is—settled by a population that will harmonize with their neighbors on the East, in language, political principles, common origin, sympathy, and even interest. Texas must be a slave country. It is no longer a matter of doubt. The interest of Louisiana requires that it should be. A population of fanatical abolitionists in Texas would have a very dangerous and pernicious influence on the overgrown slave population of that state. Texas must and ought to become an outwork on the west, as Alabama and Florida are on the east, to defend the key of the western world—the mouths of the Mississippi. Being fully Americanized under the Mexican flag would be the same thing in effect and ultimate result as coming under the United States flag. A gentle breeze shakes off a ripe peach. Can it be supposed that the violent political convulsions of Mexico will not shake off Texas as soon as it is ripe enough to fall? All that is now wanting is a great immigration of good and efficient families this fall and winter. Should we get such an immigration, especially from the Western States—all is done; the peach will be ripe.13

  The mostly southern-born white settlers of Texas were on a collision course with the Mexican government. The two sides could no longer avoid the slavery issue. Mexico now fully supported equality for its entire population, while many of the white immigrants wanted Texas to become an empire for slavery.

  Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, president of Mexico and commander of the Mexican army, puzzled as to why a province in his republic still allowed slaves, asked: “Shall we permit those wretches to moan in chains any longer in a country whose kind laws protect the liberty of man without distinction of cast or color?”14 Santa Anna posed the rhetorical question in early 1836, just as Crockett was making his way to Texas.

  Crockett himself was not opposed to slavery, having bought and sold slaves over the years, though never on a large scale. But he was not so passionate about slavery that he went to Texas to take part in a revolt. He was more interested in shooting the bison on the Texas prairie than killing “yaller niggers,” as Mexicans were sometimes called.15 Crockett’s only concern with the war that raged between transplanted Americans and the forces of Gen. Santa Anna was whether its outcome would help him get some land sooner rather than later. Shortly after he lost his last congressional race in August of 1835, he explained in a letter that one of his main reasons for leaving the United States was to get away from Jackson and Van Buren until they were no longer in power. “I do believe Santa Ana’s [sic] kingdom [Mexico] will be a paradise, compared with this, in a few years,”16 he wrote.

  His decision to go to Texas, then, was not impulsive. Texas promised Crockett a fresh start and new opportunities for homesteading as well as politicking.17

  A desire for land and not heroism was on Crockett’s mind as he and his companions made their way south. The quartet of riders made stops at several towns, including Jackson and Bolivar, and along the way picked up others who wanted to go to Texas. As many as thirty riders had joined Crockett’s entourage by the time they finally rode into Memphis on November 10. Most of them would stay in Memphis or drop out along the journey through Arkansas and across the Mexican border into Texas.

  While spending a few days in Memphis, Crockett looked up old friends such as Mayor Marcus Winchester, the well-known business and political figure who had invested money and energy in his earlier political campaigns. The river town, with its many pleasurable distractions, had always proved inviting to Crockett. Much time also was spent enjoying horns of drink with citizens and comrades at the Union Hotel, Hart’s Saloon, and Neil McCool’s establishment. It was at this time that Crockett made his famous declaration to the Tennessee voters: “Since you have chosen to elect a man with a timber toe to succeed me, you may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.”18 Most likely he repeated the statement many times as he traveled southward to the U.S.-Mexico border.

  From Memphis, Crockett and his followers were ferried across the Mississippi and into Arkansas. They reached the territorial capital of Little Rock in the late afternoon of November 12. “A rare treat,” declared the Gazette, one of the city’s daily newspapers.

  Among the distinguished characters who have honored our City with their presence within the last week, was no less a personage than Col. DAVID CROCKETT—better known as DAVY CROCKETT—the reel critter himself—who arrived on Thursday evening last, with some 6 or 8 followers�
��. The news of his arrival rapidly spread, and we believe within bounds, when we say, that hundreds flocked to see the wonderful man, who, it is said, can whip his weight in wild-cats, or grin the largest panther out of a tree.19

  While in Little Rock, Crockett visited a popular tavern, was entertained by a puppet show, and bagged a deer he hung up and butchered behind the Jefferies Hotel. At one point, he showed off his skill with Betsey at a shooting match where it was said he struck the center of the bull’s eye with both his first and second shots. Later a large group of anti-Jacksonians toasted Crockett at a banquet held in his honor at the hotel. He obliged them by lambasting the president and vice president. Crockett also had high praise for Arkansas and told the overflow crowd: “If I could rest anywhere it would be in Arkansas, where the men are the real half-horse, half-alligator breed such as grow nowhere else on the face of the universal earth but just around the backbone of North America.”20

  But Crockett was not ready to rest and soon departed Little Rock with his followers bound for Texas. Many others were making the same journey. “The Texas fever is beginning to develope [sic] itself in Little Rock,” reported a Virginia newspaper. “Four young men, who have caught the patriotic flame, took their departure from our city…to gather laurels on the plains of Texas.”21 Large bands of heavily armed men rode down the old military road that had been used to herd the displaced Choctaws to the western lands of Indian Territory. At the crossroads town of Washington, Arkansas, they paused to refresh and then continued on the Southwest Trail winding its way to the border crossings on the Red River.

  Crockett may have traversed at least a short stretch of southern Indian Territory, and then near Lost Prairie, Arkansas, he finally crossed the meandering Red River to the Mexican side. He entered in the far northeast corner of Texas at the Jonesboro Crossing.22 While in the area, a settler named Isaac Jones encountered Crockett, who bolstered his dwindling finances by swapping his old watch and thirty dollars in cash for Crockett’s fancy engraved timepiece given to him by the citizens of Philadelphia in 1834.23

  Crockett apparently liked what he found in the Red River country of northeast Texas. He spent his first night in Texas at the home of John Stiles, a Kentucky native, who helped guide Crockett to the home of Capt. William Becknell, the famed “Father of the Santa Fe Trade,” the route from Franklin, Missouri, to the ancient capital of New Mexico that came to be called the Santa Fe Trail.24 Becknell opened the popular trade route in 1821, lived as a fur trapper for a short period, and returned to Franklin in 1825. Ten years later he led a party of Missourians to Texas and had only recently finished building his cabin when Crockett and his party showed up for a visit.

  The Becknell homestead was about eight miles from Clarksville, founded by James Clark, an early white settler. Clark’s wife, Isabella Hadden Hopkins Hanks Clark, was the widow of John Hanks, who—according to local legend—was a relative of Nancy Hanks, mother of Abraham Lincoln.25 When Isabella, 31, learned of Crockett’s plans to go hunting, she immediately saddled a horse and rode off to warn him of a band of Comanche raiders in the area. She “struck the trail of David Crockett and by following the trodden grass trailed him” and his party to the Becknell place on the prairie west of Clarksville. The young woman and Becknell strongly suggested that Crockett and his men “turn south down the Choctaw trail and strike the Spanish trail into San Antonio at Nacogdoches, thus avoiding these wild tribes who were then on the war-path west of here,” wrote Pat Clark, the grandson of James and Isabella.

  David Crockett, being a great hunter, was prevailed upon by Capt. Becknall [sic] to stop for a few days and rest his horses; and the party went on a hunt in the country west of here. Old Uncle Henry Stout…himself being a great hunter and one of the most remarkable guides on any frontier, went with Mr. Crockett out for one hundred miles or more with the hope they might strike the famous herds of buffalo, which Mr. Crockett was extremely anxious to do. While out hunting they were riding through some skirts of timber with grass and weeds in the ravines often coming up to the saddle skirts of the horses. There were no roads or bridle paths anywhere. They suddenly rode into droves of bees nesting in the grass. Evidently the City of Honey Grove got its name from this circumstance and David Crockett afterwards referred to that place as Honey Grove.26

  The prairies, clumps of blackjack trees, fertile soil, and streams lined with cottonwoods appealed to Crockett, and he later wrote in a letter to family in Tennessee that he found this land to be “the garden spot of the world.”27 There also was an abundance of game, and Crockett enjoyed hunting so much that he was hesitant to leave and explore any further. He stayed on for a while longer and even failed to show up on time for a Christmas rendezvous with other members of his party. Soon rumors began circulating that the great bear hunter and marksman had run afoul of some warring Indians. By early 1836 stories of Crockett’s death began appearing in eastern newspapers.

  “A letter was read to-day by a member of Congress from Brownsville, Tennessee, in which it was stated that intelligence had been received there of the death of Col. David Crockett, in Texas, soon after his arrival in that country,”28 reported the New Bedford Mercury, on February 26, 1836.

  When it was learned that he was hunting and had not been scalped by Kickapoos or Comanches, Crockett came in for some barbs. Those who were following his journey presumed that he wanted to get into the heart of Texas to take part in the fight against the Mexican government. “You may have heard that David Crockett set out for this country with a company of men to join the army,” wrote Edward Warren, of Bangor, Maine, during an 1836 Texas visit. “He has forgotten or waved [sic] his original intention & stopped some 80 to 100 miles to the north of this place to hunt Buffalo for the winter! For a long time, it was feared that he & his party had been destroyed by the tribes of wild Indians through which he intended to pass. But, at last, it is ascertained that he is at his favorite amusement.”29

  Finally, in early January of 1836, Crockett and his original three companions reined up their horses in Nacogdoches, the oldest town in Texas. He was reluctant to leave the good hunting grounds, but he had also heard stories about the successes of Sam Houston, his old Tennessee friend; Stephen Austin; and other land agents, or empresarios, who had established land agencies and were on their way to becoming wealthy men. Crockett believed that, at last, he could gain his own fortune, and in a place where he could hunt almost every day of the year. As one author noted, Crockett was “in a state of euphoria.”30

  Throughout Crockett’s long ride from Tennessee to Texas, Halley’s Comet, the most famous of all the celestial nomads, was clearly visible, just as it is every seventy-six years or so. Across the land people were in awe when they spied the object slowly making its way through the night sky.31 For centuries people believed a comet appeared as a harbinger of chaos and disaster. Comets were to be feared. One medieval pope even excommunicated Halley’s Comet and declared it an “instrument of the devil.”

  The appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1835–1836 was blamed for catastrophes around the world, including a horrific fire in New York City that raged for several days and nights, the massacre of 280 people in Africa by Zulu warriors, and wars that erupted across Latin America. The Seminole Indians in Florida saw in the comet’s long tail a sign of the tragedy that soon descended on them as they lost their homes and were exiled to Indian Territory.

  Among many Americans, especially Anglo Texans, Halley’s Comet signaled the impending fall of the Alamo. But for the Tejanos—the people of Mexican blood living in Texas—the comet was a portent of the Mexican army’s defeat at San Jacinto.

  Halley’s Comet was rediscovered in August 1835, about the time of Crockett’s defeat for another term in Congress. It was visible for an extended period and could still be seen long enough for enterprising promoters to issue The Comet Almanack for 1836. It sold well but not nearly as well as the Davy Crockett Almanack of that year with a cover illustration of Crockett wading the Mississippi River
on a pair of stilts. Stories made the rounds, in newspapers and future almanacs, claiming that Crockett and his nemesis Andrew Jackson had forged a truce and that Old Hickory had commissioned Crockett to scale the Alleghenies and wring the tail off the comet before it could char the earth.32 By the time the comet finally vanished in May 1836, not to be seen again until 1910, the ashes of the Alamo, the last battle of Crockett’s life, were long cold and scattered.

  THIRTY-SIX

  EL ALAMO

  WHEN THE CROCKETT ENTOURAGE rode into Nacogdoches on January 5, 1836, they were warmly greeted with a cannon salute, and that evening they were feted at a great banquet. Crockett had taken his time in getting to the old Spanish town, where many volunteers were gathering and some of the revolutionary leaders were plotting the overthrow of the Mexican government. The local citizens, of course, assumed Crockett’s sole purpose in coming to Texas was to join in the battle. Mindful of a future in politics and not wishing to disappoint, Crockett responded with one of his robust and colorful speeches.

  “I am told, gentlemen,” Crockett said to his hosts,

  that when a stranger like myself arrives among you, the first inquiry is, what brought him here. To satisfy your curiosity at once as to myself, I will tell you all about it. I was, for some years, a member of Congress. In my last canvass, 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 before. But, if not, they might go to hell, and I would go to Texas. I was beaten, gentlemen, and here I am.1

  The well-used “hell or Texas” phrase was a proven crowd pleaser and worked every time. Crockett beamed as everyone present at the banquet erupted in loud cheers. “We’ll go to the city of Mexico and shake Santa Anna as a coon dog would a possum,” one newspaper reported the “old bear hunter” shouted back. “The roar of applause was like a thunder-burst.”2