by Buddy Levy
The band then scalped the disfigured heads and moved along a sparse trail leading to the river. They skulked quietly down the trace, blood still drying on their hands, and came across an equally grotesque scene. A Spaniard, along with what they presumed to be his wife and four young children, lay recently killed and scalped. Crockett used his deft understatement to describe the situation: “I began to feel mighty ticklish along about this time, for I knowed if there was no danger then, there had been; and I felt exactly like there still was.” The group pressed noiselessly on, pushing through gnarled thicket, and the trace they followed came to the river, which they took downstream until they were across from the Creek encampment. The spooky place turned out to be entirely abandoned but for “two squaws and ten children.”
They were dismally low on provisions, and it was almost dark, the riverbanks and ground inland of them almost impassably thick with cane and vine. Russell determined that the best action would be to scout the camp on the Conecuh, and he selected Crockett to strike out in a canoe that night and search downstream for provisions of any kind. Crockett chose a man named John Guess, and a friendly Creek, and they paddled into the blackness. “It was very dark, and the river was so full that it overflowed the banks and the adjacent low bottoms. This rendered it very difficult to keep the channel, and particularly as the river was very crooked.”
In the end the plan to attack the camp on the Conecuh was scrapped by Major Uriah Blue of Virginia, and the scouting parties straggled down the Escambia to a place called Miller’s Landing. Then, after a brief skirmish that included the killing and scalping of a handful of prisoners by the Indian guides, they set out to traverse the panhandle country. Crockett had found little on his night foray, and had then been recalled, so that by now everyone was “in extreme suffering for want of something to eat.” They had originally departed with twenty days’ ration of flour and only eight days’ worth of beef, and had now been out for thirty-four days.22 They forded the Chattahoochee River, to the country toward the east, needing sustenance in the worst way. Coupled with near starvation, they were also suffering from exhaustion and overexposure to the hostile elements. One evening their spies returned to report they had found a village, and hoping for provisions to pillage, they made a gallant push to reach the place. The delirious men would surely have fantasized about food as they traveled all night. Around sunrise they could see the outline of the town, and they readied for battle, loading guns and snapping bayonets into place. The famished men charged the town, but to their deepest despair, they found not a single human being left to kill, the Indians having departed sometime before their arrival. They poked around, disconsolate, and when they found nothing, not a single pallet of corn or potatoes, they burned the place to the ground, then turned back toward their camp of the previous night, weather-beaten, and, as Crockett put it, “as nearly starved as any set of poor fellows ever were in the world.”
With the situation about as grim as it could get, they divided their regiment. Major Childs and his men headed for Baton Rouge, where they would eventually meet up with some of Jackson’s forces returning from victory in New Orleans. Major Russell took some of his men, and a few of the fittest horses, in the direction of Fort Decatur, along the Tallapoosa, in hopes of obtaining some food, for death by starvation had become a very real possibility. For fit hunters familiar with the region and its denizens, the country around there should have been rich with game—larger animals like deer and wild hogs roamed the higher, drier ground, and the bogs and marches teemed with smaller fare like turtles and squirrels and other rodents. The brackish waters might provide oysters and fish if one knew where to look, or how to harvest them.23 But the hunting was difficult and not always productive, especially when conducted by diminished, even emaciated men unfamiliar with this hostile terrain. Days and nights blurred together into a surreal slog as the company struggled on through the marsh. Crockett, clearly the most accomplished and productive of his group, hunted every day now, and “would kill every hawk, bird, and squirrel” he could find. Others followed his lead, and when they would finally cease at night and slump over in exhaustion, the hunters would hurl their kill into a general pile to divvy up at mess.
By now the men were driven insane with hunger, with a few secretly hoarding food. Even raw or barely cooked meat parts like turkey gizzards were worth lying about, fighting for, even killing over. Cooperation, unity, and order unraveled, and Crockett rightly surmised that things had deteriorated to the point that “every fellow must shift for himself,” so he took the small company of his mess and decided to strike out from the other troops. Crockett rationalized it this way: “We know’d that nothing more could happen to us if we went than if we staid, for it looked like it was to be starvation any way; we therefore determined to go on the old saying, ‘root hog or die.’ ”24
They kept on for three excruciatingly slow days, passing through ghostly remnant towns littered with the bodies of Indians, but still shooting very little game and finding nothing to eat, until at length, as Crockett related, they nearly gave up. “We all began to get ready to give up the ghost, and lie down and die; for we had no prospect of provision, and knew we couldn’t go much further without it.” Still Crockett kept hunting, and he managed a few small squirrels. He later fired on a hawk, and a group of wild turkeys broke from the thick cane, and a hunting partner of his dropped one. Crockett crept after the scattered flock, following the river bottom, energized with the prospect, at long last, of cooked game. He calmly lowered his rifle on a turkey sitting alongside the creek, and “blazed away . . . and brought him down.”
They ate a large turkey soup that night, their hollow bellies distending. Afterward, some of their messmates related that they had found a bee tree in their absence, so they all took out their tomahawks and hacked into the hives, scooping out handfuls of the honey, gorging themselves to near bursting, growing sick it had been so long since their stomachs had been full. They plopped down to rest, and when Crockett woke he struck out to hunt again, his belly full, hopeful that their luck was changing. He killed a deer that very morning, a fine buck, and flushed a large bear that made him regret he had no dogs to chase after it with, for he “always delighted most in bear hunting.” When he returned to camp with his buck, he found that his group had rejoined a division of his “starving army,” so he generously gave his deer to the men.
They were fourteen miles from Fort Decatur, where they figured to restock provisions. But when they arrived, they found things were sparse and hard at that fort, too, and after consuming one ration of meat “but not a mouthful of bread,” Crockett commandeered a canoe and paddled across the Tallapoosa to Big Warrior’s town to see what he could scrounge. Industry compelled him to trade ten bullets and some gunpowder for two hatfuls of corn, a deal which suited him just fine, since he couldn’t eat bullets. Crockett recollected that he prized that ration of corn so dearly he “wouldn’t have taken fifty silver dollars for it.” The next morning they struck out for Hickory Ground, the site of the treaty with the Creeks on August of 1814. Provisions there proved inadequate again, and they kept on, marching nearly fifty miles up the Coosa north to Fort Williams, where they were met with meager rations of parched corn and one ration each of flour and corn. Still, it was food, and they lived on the hope of finally arriving back at Fort Strother, where there were sure to be rations.
By now many of the horses, overworked and underfed, were dying. Crockett reckoned that as many as thirteen perished in a single day, and they were forced even to abandon good saddles and bridles—an unthinkable waste, but necessary—there simply was no way to carry them.25 They wandered on day after day, measuring the miles by now familiar landmarks like Fort Talladega. Death and its reminders were all around them, including ghoulish and chilling scenes that only war can conjure: “We went through the old battle ground, and it looked like a great gourd patch; the sculls of the Indians who were killed still lay scattered all about, and many of their frames were still p
erfect, as the bones had not separated.”
Crockett and his mates looked near dead themselves, the few clothes they still possessed rotting off their bodies. The days were bone-numbing cold, the nights a huddled shiver that proved nearly unbearable. At the depth of winter, the creeks froze at their edges, and chill winds tore down from the northern ranges in violent gusts that the men would wince away from. Finally, one frigid morning, the knot of men came upon East Tennessee troops bound for Mobile, and to Crockett’s great surprise and happiness his younger brother Joseph was among them. The meeting was a fortunate and timely windfall, for Crockett fueled on fresh provisions and there was even food for his horse, which was about to give out. Crockett spent a rare happy evening with his brother and a number of “the boys” from their own neighborhood, hearing stories and anecdotes from back home near Bean’s Creek, which he now began to long for most painfully. The next morning Crockett said farewell to Joseph and the others, then crossed the icy Coosa and at long last arrived at the relative comfort and safety of Fort Strother. He had survived a nightmarish detail that nearly took his life, had participated in killing what few hostile Indians there were to be found, but mainly had been engaged in a protracted struggle for survival in an unfamiliar and inhospitable wilderness. He figured enough was enough, so after recuperating and eating for a few days, he struck out for home and shortly arrived to a joyous homecoming with Polly and the boys. Crockett reveals a modicum of sensitivity and softness in his character, as well as a hint of insecurity, when he recalled seeing them after so much hardship and such depravity:
I found them all well and doing well; and though I was only a rough sort of backwoodsman, they seemed mighty glad to see me, however little the quality folks might suppose it. For I do reckon we love as hard in the backwood country, as any people in the whole of creation.
Crockett had spent only a few happy days at home when he received unsettling news: he had orders to return to the front, and join an expedition to Alabama, along the Cahaba and Black Warrior rivers, “to see if there was no Indians there.” Having seen what he had, Crockett figured that there probably weren’t too many Indians to be found, and anyway, he needed to be home for a time. He arranged, in a move that was common, legal, and in no way considered suspect, to buy off his remaining time of one month to a young man raring to go. Crockett would later note, with a hint of “I told you so,” that on his return, the young man confirmed Crockett’s suspicions and they did not find any Indians, “any more than if they had been all the time chopping wood in my clearing.” This seemed to validate Crockett’s decision not to go back, and David Crockett’s military career was over. He received an honorable discharge from Brigadier General John Coffee, and concluded his six-month tour of duty as 4th Sergeant.26
It was time to reconnect with his loved ones, to head back into the fields and try to make a go of farming if he could, to hunt the hollows and haunts around his cabin and see if he might prosper. He’d proven his worth as a backwoodsman and knew he could endure most any physical hardship that might come his way, and he’d seen some of the ways that politics play out, even on such a stage as a battlefield. He had served under the now famous General Andrew Jackson,27 a notch on the leather belt certainly, and undoubtedly fodder for tall tales at taverns around Bean’s Creek. But mostly, at almost thirty years of age with practically nothing to show for it, David Crockett was glad to be back home. As it turned out, the joy of his reunion would be as fleeting as a rainbow after a spring squall.
SIX
Trials on the Homefront
HOMECOMINGS WERE INTIMATE and intense times on the dangerous frontier, and the Crocketts’ would have been equally close and passionate. A new baby, little Polly (her given name was Margaret), arrived early in the year, but the bliss of her arrival was soon overshadowed by the specter of devastating loss. By summer Crockett’s wife, Polly, was gravely ill. Crockett recalled the time with anguish as “the hardest trial which ever falls to the lot of man.” Though the exact details of Polly’s death are not known, it is conceivable that she died from complications after the birth of her daughter. But myriad killers—including malaria, cholera, and typhoid—plagued the far outposts of civilization and any of these may have been the cause.1 In any event, Polly apparently suffered for a time before, as Crockett put it with a touch of poetry, “death, the cruel leveler of all distinctions,—to whom the prayers of husbands, and even of helpless infancy, are addressed in vain,—entered my humble cottage, and tore from my children an affectionate good mother, and from me a tender and loving wife.”
Prone to almost melancholy lovesickness as an adolescent and a young man, Crockett genuinely adored his Polly, and he never spoke of her at any time with anything other than tenderness and devotion. He took the loss very hard. The event forced Crockett to ponder his own faith (what there was of it) and the divine workings of the world, which he understood are often inexplicable. Crockett described Polly’s passing as “the doing of the Almighty, whose ways are always right, though we sometimes think they fall heavily on us.” His referral to her “sufferings” suggests she did not perish overnight, or even quickly, but rather hung on and fought for a time.2 And then, she was gone. Crockett buried Polly in the nearby woods adjacent to the cabin, marking her grave simply with a pile of rough stones, and never spoke or wrote of this trial again. Though it was summer, darkness seemed to fall all around him. Crockett languished in depression, commenting flatly that “it appeared to me, at that moment, that my situation was the worst in the world.”
The realities of frontier living, however, did not offer the luxury of moping about feeling sorry for oneself for very long. Crockett was immediately faced with a daunting fact: he was left alone with two young boys and a tiny infant daughter, and he was rather ill-prepared to care for them. The boys, at about eight and six respectively, would have been somewhat accustomed to chores and light farm work, but they were used to having a mother around, and her absence was immediately felt. The situation was bleak, as Crockett needed to try to keep the farm functioning, while hunting for food would keep him away for extended periods. It was an onerous time for the widower.
Under the circumstances, Crockett could easily have buckled, pawning his children off on relatives, but to his credit he sought other alternatives. He loved his boys, and the tiny babe Polly would certainly have reminded him of his wife. Crockett vowed to keep the family together, come what may. “I couldn’t bear the thought of scattering my children,” he confessed. One solution dawned on him, and he set about convincing his brother and his wife and children to move in and help around the place. They kindly consented, but Crockett admitted that it wasn’t ideal. “They took as good care of my children as they could, but yet it wasn’t all like the care of a mother. And though their company was to me in every respect like that of a brother and sister, yet it fell far short of being like that of a wife.”
Though throughout his narrative he is often philosophical and even poetic, Crockett was primarily a man of action, of deeds over ideas. As a young man he had “set out to hunt” a wife when he determined that he needed one, and now again he looked forward to what he must, of necessity, do. The motto to which he ultimately yoked himself (and which adorns the title page of his narrative) exclaims: “Be always sure you’re right, THEN GO AHEAD!” This was not the credo of a man who made hasty or irrational decisions, but rather reflected a man of steadfast optimism. One needed to assess a situation quickly, weigh the alternatives, make a decision, and then act on it—one needed to “go ahead” rather than retreat. There was no time to linger in the past, not when the often bitter realities of the present—hungry young mouths to feed, a farm gone to seed, debts piling up higher than the corn rows—pressed down all around you. So it was that Crockett confronted his current state of affairs and levied his decision: “I came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t do, but that I must have another wife.”
While Crockett’s first courtships were fraught with young love, accep
tance, rejection, and all manner of drama, his second round could hardly even be called courting. It was more of a business venture, a contractual arrangement based on mutual needs. Nearby lived a woman recently widowed, whose husband had been slain in the attack at Fort Mims.3 She had a son and daughter of her own, about the same age as Crockett’s children, and one can almost see him rubbing his chin as the notion hit him: “I began to think, that as we were both in the same situation, it might be that we could do something for each other.” The woman he was considering was one Elizabeth Patton, an intelligent and resourceful daughter of a prominent North Carolina farmer and planter named Robert Patton who had served in the Revolutionary War. Her good breeding showed in her manners, her managerial skills, and the tidy state of her own small farm, which appeared organized and well-tended compared to Crockett’s own grounds, unkempt because of frequent, and extended, absences. She was also rumored to possess some “grit” of her own, a sum amounting to about $800, an eye-opening and fortunate windfall certainly not lost on the perpetually impoverished David Crockett.4 He therefore began to find reasons for visits, and as she lived nearby, this was quite convenient. He would happen by her “snug little farm” and soon began to formally pay his respects to her. She would certainly have surmised what he was up to—and appears to have enjoyed his blunt entreaties—despite his feigned subtlety: “I was as sly about it as a fox when he is going to rob a hen-roost.”
