Bear Grease - Ep. 114: David Crockett - The Early Years (Part 2)

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

On the last episode, we learned that David Crockett was America's first celebrity and that his identity was founded on being a bear hunter. We learned that there were four Crocketts that America knew: the bear hunter, the soldier, the politician and the martyr at the Alamo. Today, Clay Newcomb will dive into what he believes was the most important part of his life, his childhood in early life. They didn't put this part of his story on television and make cartoons of it to put on lunch boxes, but this period led him to be a soldier, which we're gonna talk about. We'll hear again from Cornell Professor, Robert Morgan and meet the man who's had one of Crockett's first guns, Betsy, in his family since 1803. We might even hear from the “greatest of all time” Michael Jordan. The way forward is complex. The truth is narrow and elusive, but Crockett's influence on American culture is foundational to learning why we are the way we are. We really doubt you’re gonna want to miss this one… Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. There was a real Crockett out there, not just the one we saw on TV, that my family had known and been involved with. On the last episode, we learned that David Crockett was America's first celebrity and that his identity was founded on being a bear hunter. We learned that there were four crockets that America knew. The bear hunter, the soldier, the politician, and the martyr at the Alamo.

Today we'll dive into what I believe was the most important part of his life, his childhood in early life. They didn't put this part of his story on television and make cartoons of it to put on lunch boxes. And this period led him to being a soldier, which we're going to talk about. We'll hear again from Cornell, Professor Robert Morgan, and meet the man who's had one of Crockett's first guns in his family since 1803. I got to shoulder the gun they call Betsy.

And we might even hear from the greatest of all time Michael Jordan. The way forward is complex. The truth is narrow and elusive. But Crockett's influence on American culture is invaluable in learning why we are the way we are. I doubt you're going to want to miss this one. That was part of his charm. He had this background very different from,

most other leaders and the politicians, and he could draw on that. Again, like Lincoln, who had all these stories from the farm and from the wild part of the country. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Greece podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. presented by FHF gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. I'm trying to get a grasp on the amount of residual knowledge Americans have on David Crockett. He's down in there deep in almost all of us. Nearly 200 years after his death, Americans seem to be born with some knowledge of him.

I'm about to ask some folks about him. Excuse me, gentlemen. Can I ask you guys a few things here? Absolutely. What do you guys know about David Crockett? Tell me everything you know, David Crockett. The only thing I know is he's a guy that was a woodsman. And that's really all I know.

Woodsman. It's been a while. You know much about David Crockett? I don't know that I know a whole lot. The thing that comes to my mind is, like, when I think of, like, American history, He's one of the, like, to me, one of the main frontiersmen that was back in the day. Okay.

American Frontiersman. Good. Thank you, guys. Good. Woodsman and American Frontiersman. Not bad. As soon as I stopped recording, this guy says he remembers the Davey Crockett song, which was first recorded in 1954 to accompany Disney's Crockett trilogy.

The song would become America's number one hit for 13 weeks. I click the recorder back on. So do you know that song? Do you know the Davey Crockett song? I remember hearing it. Can you sing it? Yeah, I'll sing the part. Davey Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.

Let's see. I don't know all these words. I think I remember the Kentucky headhunters singing it or something. Yeah, yeah. All right, cut loose on one there, dip-any-doo. The Kentucky Headhunters. Yep. The Kentucky Headhunters recorded the ballad of Davey Crockett in 1991.

Their music video has the live band playing in front of a dancing crowd, all wearing coonskin caps. They pan to the drummer. Behind him is a window with the bear looking in. The drummer abandons the set and chases after the bear with his fists up. The crowd cheers on the drummer chasing the bear, and then the man is attacked by children with bows. This video taps into two of Crockett's four identities that Robert Morgan spoke about. He was a bear hunter and a soldier in the creek war.

It's unadvisable and unnecessary for a man to speak ill of the Kentucky headhunters, but that's not my favorite recording of the ballad of Davy Crockett. I'm a big fan of the Fess Parker version. Do you recall in the 1985 movie Back to the Future, which is set in 1955, Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, goes back in time and walks into a diner, and Fess Parker's The Ballad of Davy Crockett is playing on the jukebox.

Hey, kid, what'd you do, jump ship? What? What's with the life preserve? I just want to use the phone. Yeah, it's in the back. The Crockett craze of the 1950s hammered America hard, and the frenzy created a new template for how TV movies could be heavily merchandised. Everything and anything you could imagine was branded with Crockett's name

and his signature coonskin cap, pocket knives, lunch boxes, postcards, books, and guitars. But this wasn't the first commercialization of Crockett. In his lifetime, he was heavily commercialized without, his permission by multiple fake autobiographies. A world-famous Broadway play was made about him, which led him to writing a real autobiography, which was a global bestseller. Europe and the Americans in the East

couldn't get enough Crockett, who had gained notoriety by being America's first frontier populist politician and boldly opposing Andrew Jackson. Crockett's anecdotal stories about bear hunting, squirrel hunting competitions, and being able to grin coons out of the tree, mesmerized people, giving them insight into this uniquely American identity of the frontier,

which I would say is still alive today. We're now going to leave the hype behind and look at the real Crockett, a real American backwoodsman. I've got a friend at Meadeter whose name rhymes with Cleves Stenella that has historically been dismissive of Crockett, viewing him to be a vain man, not worthy to stand as a peer to bear Greece Hall of Fame or Daniel Boone. This is like trying to compare Michael Jordan to any other player. Jordan is the goat and Boone is the indisputable goat of the American frontier. Crocket is clearly the LeBron James of the American frontier, which is major.

Here is Michael Jordan. In this clip, a reporter asked him about LeBron. I think Cleve could learn something here. How do you personally view that legacy that he's built? And do you think that by the end he will merit a place in that conversation of top three, top one in time? LeBron James. Insert Crockett's name for LeBron.

Jordan is Boone. I just think that, you know, we're playing in different areas. He's an unbelievable player. He's one of the best players in the world, if not the best player in the world. I know it's a natural tendency to compare eras to eras. And it's going to continue to happen. I'm a fan of his. I love watching him play.

I think he's made his mark. He will continue to do so over a period of time. But when you start the comparisons, I think it is what it is. It's just a stand-up measurement. I take it with a grain of salt. He is a heck of a basketball player without a doubt. I'd take any comparison of Boone and Crockett with a grain of salt. Now we're going to continue our walk-through Crockett.

life chronologically. We left off with him working for an honest Dutchman named Canadae. We're trying to understand where all this crockett hype came from. Here's Robert Morgan. He was born where Limestone Creek runs into the Nolachukkah River. 1786. And he was born in the state of Franklin, which was this state that lasted only four or five years. And then North Carolina, with the help of the federal government, declared it illegal. And then, of course, it became part of the state of Tennessee. But I've always seen that as kind of significant, this place that only lasted, you know, for four or five years. And was like his life, which he moved and moved over the kind of instability.

his debts catch up with him, and he's moving into the frontier into cheaper land, free land and starting all over. He's like Daniel Boone in that. I mean, he runs up debts, and then, you know, he has to try again and start again. But he was kind of bound out by his father to labor for other people to pay the father's debts. John Crockett was always getting into debt. He was borrowing money. And again, he was like Daniel Boone, and the older crock.

He did the same way. He had to keep borrowing money. He was always in debt. And this is very interesting that this father would put his young son out to labor when he was so young to work hard. And this is really important in understanding that from a very early age, he was doing this heavy labor. It farms.

When he was 12 years old, he was. was what he called bound out by his father to a complete stranger that had come through the town. Crocus' father owned a tavern in what is now Morristown, Tennessee. It was a primitive hotel and restaurant. I want to read out of Crocket's biography about a formative moment in his young life. I don't want to take for granted that we can hear these stories in Crocket's own voice. In history, a primary source, a firsthand account is major. The middlemen and their interpretation are absent from this. This is when Crockett was bound out to a complete stranger by his father.

An old Dutchman by the name of Jacob Siler, who was moving from Knox County to Rockbridge in the state of Virginia in passing made a stop at my father's house. He had a large stock of cattle that he was carrying on with him, and I suppose made some proposition to my father to how to how. hire someone to assist him. Being hard run every way and having no thought as I believe that I was cut out for Congress or the like, young as I was and as little as I knew about traveling or being from home, he hired me to the old Dutchman to go 400 miles on foot with a perfect stranger that I had never seen until the evening before. Crocket seemed to be surprised that his dad

did this. Even a frontier child raised in such a wild environment. thought this was a touch irresponsible. I'm certain Juju wouldn't approve, but then again, she did let me and Chris Roberts float Brier Creek in a leaky canoe without life jackets after a four-inch rain in May in 1998. You can listen to Meteor Close Calls for that story. I'm out drowned, and I'm not blaming Juju.

Did your parents ever do anything that looking back surprises you? I've found myself on the trail of a rabbit brothers in Let's get back to Crockett. Crocket's family were those aggressive Ulster Scots that came from Ireland. His father, John Crockett, wasn't born in America. David said he didn't know if his dad was born in Ireland or on the boat passage over. His mother, Rebecca Hawkins, had been born in America. Crocett's grandparents were some of the first white folks to settle in eastern Tennessee

and were killed in their cabin by Creek Indians in 1777, nine years before David's birth. During the raid Crocket's uncle, who was both deaf and dumb, who they fondly called Dumb Jimmy, was captured by the creeks and lived with them for 17 years and nine months before John Crockett, David's father, located his brother and purchased him back from the creeks. David wrote that he didn't remember how much they paid for him. I bet Jimmy had some wild stories. This was the world Crockett was born into. His parents lived in extreme poverty on the frontier. His father fought in the Revolutionary War but never talked about it. And in his autobiography, David recalls as a boy watching his father cleanse a gunshot wound using a

muzzleloader ramrod to push a silk scarf through a man's abdomen. Crocket's cousin shot his neighbor who was picking wild grapes in the woods after he mistook him for a deer. It was a hunting accident. They called John Crockett who saved the man's life. David Crockett was one of nine siblings, born fifth in the order. He was a middle child, and he said, quote, I stood no chance to become great in any other way than by accident, as my father was very poor, and living as he did far in the backwoods, he had neither the means nor the opportunity to give me or any of the rest of his children any learning. End of quote. Here's Mr. Morgan on Crockett's experience as a kid. Well, he was hired to help drive a herd of cattle up that wilderness road, the old road, all the way into Virginia, I think, beyond Lynchburg.

That's really something to think about, this 12-year-old kid being sent to do that kind of heavy work. I mean, driving cattle is a kind of tough thing. You've got to keep them in line. You've got to fend off the dogs that run out and scare them and make sure they have enough to eat. them in cattle on a long trip line. You couldn't possibly carry enough feed for them, so you got to find a place. Usually it's what's called a drover stand,

somebody who has a kind of tavern, and you stay the night, and they sell you corn, meal, or something to feed your cattle. And then you move on to some very rough people out there on the road in those taverns. So Crockett, from a very early age, was exposed to kind of rough society.

Crockett was exposed at an early age to the roughness of the American frontier. I'm certain in his childhood the people he dealt with greatly influenced who he would become, how he talked, how he saw the world, who he was. It appears to me that Crockett had a very tender, loyal heart and it's exposed many times in his book, but can be lost in his boisterousness.

This tender heart will also be exposed later in his politics, as he would fight hard for the rights of the common people and aggressively oppose the harsh Native Americans. American removal policies. As a kid, he worked for this Dutchman he was hired out to for the entirety of their agreement. Crockett was an honest man, but decided the guy was just going to keep him, so as a young boy, he planned a secret escape. He wrote, quote, I went to bed early that night, but sleep seemed to be a stranger to me, for though I was a wild boy, yet I dearly loved my father and mother, and their images appeared to be so deeply fixed in my mind that I could

not sleep for thinking about him. Crockett loved his mom and dad. That leaves a tender mark on one's legacy. Crocket leaves in a snowstorm that will cover his tracks as he starts a treacherous, at least 100-mile journey home. Here he talks about what happens. I was fortunately overtaken by a gentleman who was returning from market to which he had been with a drove of horses. He had a lead horse with a bridle and saddle on him, and he kindly offered to let me get on his horse and ride. I did so and was glad of the chance, for I was tired, and moreover, near the first crossing of the Roanoke,

which I would have been compelled to wade, cold as the water was, if I had not fortunately met this good man. I traveled with him in this way, without anything turning up worthy of recording, until we got within 15 miles of my father's house. There we parted, and he went to Kentucky, and I trudged on homeward, which place I reached that evening.

The name of this kind gentleman I have entirely forgotten, and I'm sorry for it, for it deserves a high place in my little book. A remembrance of his kindness to a little straggling boy, and a stranger to him, has, however, a resting place in my heart, and there it will remain as long as I live. Crocket's tender recollection of this stranger is touching.

He would be loyal and generous to his friends and his family his whole life. Crocket would make it home and stay for about a year before his father tried to put him in school, but Davy couldn't take it. He got in a fight at school and started skipping class. Here's what happened. At last, however, the master wrote a note to my father, inquiring why I was not sent to school. When he read this note, he called me up and I knew very well. that I was in a devil of a hobble, for my father had been taken a few horns, and was in good

condition to make the fur fly. He called on me to know why I had not been to school, and I told him I was afraid to go, and that the master would whip me, for I knew quite well if I turned over to this old kitchen, I should be cooked up to a crackling in a little or no time, but I soon found that I was not to expect a much better fate at home, for my father told me in a very angry manner that he would whip me an eternal sight worse than the master if I didn't start immediately to the school. I tried again to beg off that nothing would do but go to the school. Finding me rather too slow about starting, he gathered about a two-year-old hickory and broke after me. I put out with all my might and soon we were both up to our top speed.

We had a tolerable, tough race for about a mile, but mind me, not on the schoolhouse road, for I was trying to get as far as tother way as possible. And yet I believe if my father and the school map, could have both levied on me at the same time I should have never been called on to sit in the councils of the nations, for I think they would have used me up. But fortunately for me, about this time, I saw just before me a hill over which I made headway like a young steamboat. As soon as I had passed over it, I turned to one side and hid myself in the bushes, and here I waited until the old gentleman passed by puffing and blowing, as though his steam was high enough to burst his

boilers. I waited until he gave up his hunt and passed back again. Then I cut out and went to the house of an old acquaintance a few miles off who was just about to start with the drove. His name was Jesse Cheek and I hired myself to go with him determining not to return home as home in the schoolhouse had both become too hot for me. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest.

It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that goblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut.

and I help with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Crocket bailed home in school when he was 13 years old, and he would be gone on a wild excursion for over two years. He lives a wildlife of adventure, rivaling the fictional characters of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer,

except Crockett's stories were real. We'll later learn, surprise, surprise that Crockett most definitely influenced Mark Twain's writing. Crockett would again work on a cattle drive and as what he called a Wagonier. He drove a wagon hauling supplies. Here's one of Crockett's wagoneering tales. Our load consisted of flour in barrels. Here I got into the wagon for the purpose of changing my clothing, not thinking I was in any danger, but while I was in there, we were met by some wheelbarrowed men who were working on the road,

and the horses took a scare in a way they went like they'd seen a ghost. They made a sudden wheel around and broke the wagon tongue slap short off as a pipe stem, and snap went both of the axles at the same time, and all of the devilish flouncing of the flower barrels that had ever been seen. Even a rat would have stood a bad chance in a straight, race among them and not much better in a crooked one for he would have been in a good way to be ground up as fine as ginger for their rolling over him but this proved to me that if a fellow is born to be hung he will never be drowned and further if he is born for a seat in congress

even flour barrels can't make mash of him if a man's born to be hung he'll never drown that's good but I hope that isn't why I survived Briar Creece Remember this book is written in the peak of Crockett's political career, so he often mentioned his seat in Congress. On Crockett's sojourn at the age of 14, he was minutes away from taking a job sailing to London when his older Wagoner boss physically restrained him from going. Crocket would bounce around for sometime more, but would head home to Tennessee after two years. But not before a wild canoe ride trying to get home. Crocket's own Breyer Creek experience. When I reached the river at the mouth of the small stream

called the Little River, the white caps were flying so that I couldn't get anybody to attempt to put me across. I argued the case as well as I could, but they told me there was danger of being capsized and drowned if I attempted to cross. I told them if I could get a canoe, I would venture caps or no caps. They tried to persuade me out of it, but finding they could not, they agreed I might take a canoe, and so I did and put up. off. I tied my clothes to the rope of the canoe to have them safe, whatever might happen. But I found it mighty ticklish business, I tell you. When I got fairly out on the river, I would have given the world if it had belonged to me to have been back on shore. But there was no time to lose now,

so I just determined to do the best I could, and the devil take the hindmost. I turned the canoe across the waves to do which I had to turn it nearly up the river as the wind came from that way. and I went two miles before I could land. 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 rejoiced that I scarcely felt the cold, though my clothes were frozen on me. And in this situation, I had to go above three miles

before I could find any house or fire to warm at. I'm certain that was a wild ride. He ended up two miles downstream. Anyway, Crockett was on his way home after two and a half years, and he returns to his father's tavern completely unannounced. He's now 15 years old, and they don't recognize him. I then went to my father's, which place I had reached late in the evening. Several wagons were there for the night and a considerable company about the house.

I inquired if I could stay all night, for I did not intend to make myself known until I saw whether any of the family would find me out. I was told that I could stay, and I went in, but had my... mighty little to say to anybody. I'd been gone so long and had grown so much that the family didn't know me at first. And another, and perhaps a stronger reason, was they had no thought or expectation of me, for they all long given me up for finally lost. After a while, we were all called to supper. I went with the rest. We had sat down at the table and begun to eat when my eldest sister recollected me. She sprung up, ran, and seized me around the neck, and claimed,

here is my lost brother. My feelings at this time it would be vain and foolish for me to attempt to describe. I had often thought I felt before and I suppose I had, but sure I am, I had never felt as I did then.

The joy of my sisters and my mother and indeed all of the family was such that it humbled me and made me sorry I hadn't submitted to a hundred whippings sooner than caused so much affliction as they had suffered on my account. I found the family had never,

heard a word for me from the time my brother left me. I was now almost 15 years old, and my increased age and size together with the joy of my father occasioned by my unexpected return, I was sure would secure me against my long, dreaded whipping, and so they did. But it will be a source of astonishment to many who reflect that I am now a member of the American Congress, the most enlightened body of men in the world, that at so advanced an age, the age of 15, I did not know the first letter in the book. Here's an interesting parallel between Crockett and Boone. Both were gone on a two-year transformative journey and then reunited with their families as

changed enlightened men. Daniel Boone went to Kentucky for two years. His family assumed him dead. And the legend has it. When he returned, Rebecca was nursing a newborn child, fathered by Boone's brother. It said Rebecca didn't recognize him when he returned and thought him a stranger. interesting. Here's Mr. Morgan with more stuff that sounds a lot like Boone,

but also some interesting insight into Crockett's influence on American culture through a writer that helped tell the world who we were. All his life, he was acting apart. He was like Boone in that way. He loved to create a persona. And it started very early that people would remember him. He had this fabulous ability to make people remember him and to always be the center of attention. He was a storyteller, that people who met him remembered him.

And this came in very handy in politics later, and probably when he was in the military. And remember that when he's writing the narrative of his life, he wants to tell it so people would be entertained. And he was hoping to run for president. So it's not that, you know, necessarily he wasn't telling it accurately, but he wanted to tell it memorably. Yeah. But one of the greatest influences he ever had was Mark Twain. He's not only a model for Lincoln and in politics. Read a little bit of his autobiography and then read the first page of Huckleberry Finn.

And you'll see the impact he had in storytelling, first person in dialect. So Crockett had influence on Mark Twain. He absolutely did, yes. And in other writers, but the greatest impact was on Mark Twain. The stories, even some of that was taken out of Huckleberry Finn, the tall tale where the guys fight on the barge. I'm half alligator, half horse, et cetera, that that's Crockett. On Southwestern humor, but I'm the greatest writer of the period is Mark Twain. So that's part of this tremendous impact.

that Crockett had on American culture. Crocket influenced the way Americans told stories. Mark Twain was born in 1835, about four months before Crockett died in March of 1836. Their lives barely overlapped. The people are lives barely overlap is interesting to consider. I was born in 1979, so certainly when I was born, there were people alive from the 1800s,

when people relied on horses for transportation, and the creation of the automobile and the airplane hadn't happened. Time is considered the fourth dimension of reality, and hard units of time measured in years, months, and hours are deceptive. Time is a mysterious, intoxicating phenomenon, often measured more functionally by fickle units of feelings, like that feels like it was a long time ago, or that feels like it happened quick.

time is rarely perceived as it actually is. We interact with time as if it's a physical substance like water that can be measured and touched, but it's more like a spiritual substance that we interact with but can't see and can't manipulate. What's my point? Crocket's life and ours aren't that far apart. Back to Crocket's childhood. After Crockett returns home at age 15, he's immediately farmed out again to pay his father's debt. Poverty is ruthless.

This was normal back then, so Crockett didn't seem to think much of it. The debt was $36, and it took him six months to pay it off. But it's here that Crockett began to work for himself and finds a man that will be very influential in his life. I want you to hear it straight from Crockett. I next went to the house of an honest Quaker by the name of John Candide, who had removed from North Carolina, and proposed to hire myself to him at two shillings a day. He agreed to take me up on a weak trial, and at the end, which he appeared pleased with my work,

he informed me that he held a note on my father for $40, and that he would give me that note if I would work for him for six months. I was certain enough that I should never get any part of the note, but then I remembered that it was my father that owed it, and I concluded it was my duty as a child to help him along and to ease his lot as much as I could. I told the Quaker I would take him up at his offer and immediately went to work. never visited my father's house during the whole time of this engagement, though he lived only 15 miles off. But when it was finished and had got the note, I borrowed one of my employer's horses and, on a Sunday evening, went to pay my parents a visit. Some time after I got there, I pulled out the note and handed it to my father, who supposed Mr. Canaday had sent it for collection. The old

man looked mighty sorry and said to me he had not the money to pay it and didn't know what he should do. I then told him that I had paid it for him, and it was then his own, that it was not presented for collection, but as a present for me. At this, he shed a heap of tears, and as soon as he got a little over it, he said he was sorry he couldn't give me anything, but he was not able. He was too poor. Here you see deep into Crockett's character, and again you see that love he had for his father. Here's Robert Morgan on Canada's influence. Today, had an enormous influence over the young Crockin. He was literate.

He was kind. He influenced him in, I'm sure, in the use of language. That here was an educated person who gave him an example of somebody who knew how to speak. He was generous. One of his sons, I think, ran a school, and he worked out this deal with the sons. He would work, I know, four days a week and get two days of education, or maybe it was vice versa. But it was the young Kennedy who really taught him to read and write and do arithmetic. And Candide was a father figure for him, really.

Absolutely. In a critical period of a young man's life from 16 to 21. Boy, that is right when somebody is really trying to figure out who they are. And Candide was such a stark contrast from his own father, who was a poor, impoverished backwoodsman. But then Canada was a staunch Quaker. He was very, very strict. He didn't believe in dancing, didn't believe in parties. And Crockett and his friend would slip out at night and go to these parties.

Crockett all his life loved to dance. And fiddle. He loved to play the fiddle. And he liked to drink. And he'd go out to these parties and drink several horns, as he called it. Yeah. A drink was a horn. and then he would slip back in.

It's hard to estimate the power of people's influence who are outside of our immediate family, especially when you're between the ages of 16 and 21. And a big part of Crockett was his love for dancing, fiddling, and drinking. The Kennedy period overlapped with the beginning of the romantic period. At a very young age, Crockett discovered girls who could say. and fell just absolutely head over heels in love. Turned out the woman, I think her name was Margaret Elder,

was already, well, she did marry somebody else. She's jilted him. Before that, he fell in love with one of Kennedy's relatives, and she was already engaged. He was very kind to him. Yeah. But he just absolutely was dazed by this beautiful girls around him. I guess when he was about 20,

He married Polly Findlay. It's a beautiful and very kind woman, his first wife, and worked on a farm. They rented a farm. He had to work very hard. They had two sons. And he realized he couldn't really make anything. He had to pay a lot for rent on that farm.

And they just weren't getting ahead at all. One of the famous sentences in his autobiography is, as I realized I was better at making a family, at increasing a family. with increasing my fortune. Another thing he said in his autobiography, he said when he was actually talking about his first serious love with a girl that jilted him, as he said, I would have agreed to fight a whole regiment of wildcats if she would have only said she would have had me.

He was always so colorful. He was very good at hyperrelated exaggerations and also with things to do with animals of the wilderness with hunting. That was part of his charm, that he had this background, very different from most other leaders and politicians. And he could draw on that. Again, like Lincoln, who had all these stories from the farm and from the wild part of the country. People loved Crockett because his humanity was always on full display. He goes into considerable detail about being jilted the day before his wedding.

He said, quote, This was as sudden to me as a clap of thunder on a bright, shiny day. It was the capstone of all the afflictions I had ever been met with, and it seemed to me that it was more than any human creature could endure. It struck me perfectly speechless for some time and made me feel so weak that I thought I should sink down. My heart was bruised, and my spirits were broken down, so I bitter farewell and turned my lonesome and miserable steps back again homeward.

My appetite failed me and grew doth. daily worse and worse. They all thought I was sick, and so I was. It was the worst kind of sickness, a sickness of the heart, and all the tender parts produced by disappointed love. End of quote. Despite being heartbroken by this gal, Crockett at age 20 in 1806 would marry Polly Finley, and they quickly had two sons. It was clear that Crockett really loved Polly. They settled in Jefferson County in Finley's Gap, approximately 60 miles south of the Cumberland Gap and near current day Knoxville, Tennessee. Polly was a weaver and a homemaker. David farmed, hunted, and often attended shooting matches, which he regularly won.

He was legitimately an incredible shot, no myth needed. David had bought his first 48-caliber flintlock rifle from Canada's son when he was 17 years old. He later traded the gun to James McQuiston. The gun is still in possession of McQuiston's relatives today. I was able to travel to East Tennessee to see the gun they call Betsy. And to meet the owner, Joe Swan and his son Ben. It's behind glass in the East Tennessee Historical Society Museum in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm inside of the museum.

Oh, I think you're right. Try it. The top one? Yeah, try that. Oh, wow. That's good. Is that amazing? How that thing just comes up.

200-year-old gun. It's got its own spring in it. Wow. The gun has a patch box to store ball patches hollowed out of the buttstock with a brass spring opening lid that opens with amazing precision and smoothness, like the glove box of a Mercedes. Benz. So I'm standing here at the East Tennessee Historical Society Museum with Joe Swan.

Joe, you own one of Crockett's first guns. Is that right? That's true, yeah. Yeah. We're sitting here looking at it. How did you come about owning this gun? Well, my father had told me when the Disney Crockett thing came about, I got so excited about it. I had to have all the stuff that they sold and all that business. And so I really was into Crockett in a big way, more than most kids, probably, even for that era. There were a lot of us that were Crockett fanatics because of the Disney shows. But the whole process of finding out that Crockett had been a neighbor of my ancestors up in Dandridge and Jefferson County, Tennessee,

and knowing that there was a real Crockett out there. not just the one we saw on TV, that my family had known and been involved with. Joe's great-great-grandfather, James McQuiston, traded Crocket a horse for the gun in 1803. It's a 48-calibur, Kentucky-long rifle-style muzzleloader. It was made in Pennsylvania in 1792. It says that on the gun. It's 62 and a half inches long and weighs 10.5 pounds. It has a swamp barrel, which is a small.

which means it tapers to the smallest point near the middle of the barrel, making the balance point just right. So McQuiston ended up with this gun that ultimately 150 years later ended up was your cousins. Yep, yep. It made up his way all the way to the coast of California and back, but yeah. Now when your cousin had it, did people know about it or was it just kind of like in the family? You just knew, yep, old cousin Bill's got Crockett's gun. My father's uncle, my dad went out to Oklahoma to visit, and that's where he saw the Crockett

rifle. And so he remembered that. And then when he told me about that story, it got me interested in going out to try to get the rifle back. In the 70s. Yes, 1977, yes. And so this is Joe's son, Ben. You said your dad used to take this gun to your elementary school. Yeah, I grew up with Dad bringing the rifle to classrooms and different events.

So it's had it hanging around the house for a lot of years before you let them display it here. It's been in other museums. And so Dad's always wanted people to see it and, you know, don't want to hide in a dark room. It needs to be looked at and appreciated. And it's a beautiful piece of history. So here's the question of the hour. Have you ever shot it? No, it would be it?

Would it shoot? I bet it would shoot. It probably, yes, yes, it probably would shoot, but it would be, it's just too old. The wood particularly is so dry. And wood is so delicate. I mean, it's so thin. What kind of wood is that? It's curly maple. Curly maple. Yeah. Which is a strong wood? Yes, yes. Very hard. Pretty common wood. Oh, it was the wood everybody wanted. Really? Was this gun like a really nice gun or an average gun? It was a nice gun. Yeah, it was a better than average gun.

young impoverished crockett wouldn't have been able to afford that i mean i think by the time he got uh to be about 20 which is about the time i think he got this gun uh he would have accumulated enough to of trading he was he was a pretty good trader uh to get enough money to buy a nice gun like this you know i think crockett was smart enough to know what the limiting factor was and his hunting so he knew he had to have a good gun right he lived in his shanty and didn't have much money but he knew he needed to invest in a good gun. I think that highly successful people are good at identifying limiting factors in their success and targeting those areas.

In Crockett's time, a muzzleloading rifle was a major limiting factor to hunting and war success. Today, it's not as much. The cheapest gun on the market is going to shoot okay under normal conditions. Back then, wet powder and guns not firing were extremely complex. The good guns were more consistent and a young Crockett bought a good one. Now, why do we call this one Betsy? That's more what everybody else calls it. Okay, okay.

So that wasn't, that's not really connected back to Crockett. Crockett had a sister, Betsy, that was his favorite sister, and she was the youngest sister, I believe. By being his favorite, I think he started calling his guns, Betsy after his sister. It might be safe to say this is Davy's oldest rifle, but it's impossible to say if it was his first, right? So some people say his first rifle was called Old Betsy, but I think that name was something that just stuck with his rifles. And it's hard to say, you know what I mean, which was his first rifle. Yeah, his Crockett had this before he was the Davy Crockett that we know. Right.

Before he became Davy Crockett, yeah. I wonder if they ever, and I know you don't know the answer to this, no one does, but I wonder if they use. it just like it's a functional gun for a long time because you know people people the way we treat history is a lot of times you don't know something was special until a generation later you know it would have just been like well yeah it's David Crockett's gun big deal let's go kill a deer let's go shoot a bear and then eventually Crockett becomes this national hero and his his fame grows after his death and then all of a sudden it's like oh we have David Crockett's gun because Like, I even equated in some ways to Native American stone points.

There was a time when people finding stone points on the ground, it was so common, because it happened so recently, that it was just, they didn't even pick them up. But today, when we see a stone point, it's like, it's a major thing to find it. And there was a time when it wasn't even just a common, common thing. And there would have been a time when everybody in the woods had a gun just like this. and then it's interesting to me to think about

when did this become something so special you know and Walt Disney helped I guess in the 1950s he helped a lot Joe and Ben let me hold Crocket's old gun and look down the barrel the long barrel and iron sights feel good you can see a video of old Betsy on my Instagram and you can even buy an exact replica

of this gun and go hunting I don't know why we get excited about physical, common objects that were handled by famous people, but humans have always done this. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood.

Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence. is scarce and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods.

Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're going to get back to the chronology of Crockett's movement west.

David and Polly stayed in Jefferson County until the fall of 1811 when they headed further west. Crocett said there weren't enough bears there and he wanted to head deeper into the frontier. and he ended up settling in Lincoln County, Tennessee, south of current Nashville, at the mouth of Mulberry Creek on the Elk River. Crocket was now 25 years old. He said, quote, I found this a very rich country and so knew that game of different sorts was plenty. It was here that I began to distinguish myself as a hunter and lay the foundation for all my future greatness. But mighty little did I know of what sort it was going to be, end of quote. From Crocket's own mouth, we see that he viewed himself as a hunter.

He's coming of age, and this is that time period when he said he had seven of the most vicious bear dogs in the South. I want to read another account of one of Crockett's bear hunts that he included in his autobiography. That night there fell a heavy rain, and it turned to a sleet. In the morning, all hands turned out hunting. My young man and a brother-in-law, who had lately settled close by me, went downriver to hunt for turkeys. but I was for larger game. I told them I had a dream the night before and I knowed it was a sign that I was to have a battle with a bear,

for in bear country I never knowed such a dream to fail. So I started up above the hurricane determined to have a bear. I had two pretty good dogs and an old hound, all of which I took along. I had gone about six miles up river and it was about four miles across to the main Obion, so I determined to strike across that as I had found nothing yet to kill. I got onto the river and turned down it. But the sleet was getting worse and worse. The bushes were all bit down and locked together with ice, so it was almost impossible to get along. In a little time, my dog started a large gang of old gobbler turkeys, and I killed two of them of the

biggest sort. I shouldered them up and moved them on until I got through the hurricane. When I was so tired, I laid my goblers down to rest as they were confounded heavy, and I was mighty tired. While I was resting my old hound went to a log and smelted a while, then raised his eyes toward the sky and cried out. Away he went, and my other dogs with him, and I shouldered my turkeys again and followed on as hard as I could drive. They were soon out of sight, and at a very little time I heard them began to bark. When I got to them, they were barking up a tree, but there was no game there. I concluded it had been a turkey, and that it had flew away. When they saw me coming, they went away again, and after a little time began to bark as before.

When I got near him, I found they were barking up the wrong tree again, as there was no game there. They served me in this way three or four times until I was so infernal mad that I determined if I could get near enough to shoot the old hound at least. With this intention, I pushed on the harder till I came to the edge of an open area. And looking on before my dogs, I saw in and about the biggest bear that ever was seen in America. who looked at the distance he was for me like a large black bull. My dogs were afraid to attack him, and that was the reason they had stopped so often that I might overtake them, but they were now almost up with him,

and I took my gobblers from my back and hung them up in a sapling, and broke like a quarter horse after my bear, for the sight of him had put new springs in me. I soon got near them, but they were just getting into a roar and thicket, and so I couldn't run through it, but had to pick my way along and had to work close even at that. And a little time I saw the bear climbing up a large black oak tree, and I crawled on until I got within about 80 yards of him. He was setting with his breast towards me, and so I put a fresh priming in my gun and fired at him.

At this, he raised one of his paws and snorted loudly. I loaded again as quickly as I could and fired as near the same place in his breast as possible, and at the crack of my gun, here he came tumbling down. In the moment he touched the ground, I heard one of my best dogs cry out. I took my tomahawk in one hand and my big butcher knife in the other and run up within four or five paces of him, at which he let my dog go and fixed his eyes on me. I got back in all sorts of a hurry, for I knowed if he got a hold of me, he would hug me all together too close for comfort.

I went to my gun and hastily loaded her again and shot him a third time, which killed him good. I now began to think about getting him home, but I didn't know how far it was. So I left him and started, and in order to find him again, I would blaze a sapling every little distance, which would show me the way back. I continued this till I got within a mile of my home, for there I knowed very well where I was, and that I could easily find the way back to my blazes. When I got home, I took my brother-in-law and my young man and four horses and went back. We got there just before dark and struck up a fire and commenced a butcher in my bear.

It was some time in the night before we finished, and I can assert, On my honor, I believe he would have weighed 600 pounds. It was the second largest I ever saw. I killed one a few years after that weighed 670 pounds. I now felt fully compensated for my sufferings and going after my powder and well satisfied that a dog might sometimes be doing a good business even when he seemed to be barking up the wrong tree. We got our meat home, and I now had the pleasure to know that we had plenty and that of the best.

through the winter to supply my family abundantly with bear meat and venison from the woods. A 600 plus pound black bear is a big one, but I believe every word of it. If you've ever hunted bears with hounds, you can spot Crockett's authenticity. He was the real deal. It's interesting today how hound hunting for bears is scrutinized by some woke groups, but it's a deep American tradition. There's even many accounts of Native Americans using hounds in the 8th. The Tennessee and North Carolina bear hunters associations both use in their tagline, quote,

Our National Heritage, bear hunting with hounds. I have a Tennessee Bear Hunters Association sticker on the window in my office. I am adamant and passionate about the future of bear hunting with hounds. Here's Robert Morgan. It was very important. These bear dogs, as you say, he didn't like purebred dogs. He had mongrel dogs. And I wish I knew what kind of pack he had, because they're very important to a bear hunter.

Yeah. How do you have? Where I grew up, people that would love to brag about their bear dogs, how many they had. And the thing, you had to have some in that area, what's called a plot hen. Yes. A dog that had been bred by the plot family for bear hunting. There's one descriptor in Crockets, I believe it's his autobiography, when he talks about going in on a bade bear at night,

and one of the dogs was white. Just one of them, though, which would have indicated that it was a walker hound, which is a type of bear dog. But then all the other dogs were dark colored because he couldn't see them in the dark. And so there's a lot of people that speculate of what they were because a dark bear dog could have been a plot dog,

which would have been unlikely that soon after the plots got into America. those dogs would have been distributed that widely because it wasn't until later that they kind of started to distribute out heavily from the plot family. But those bear dogs became really important for him. So it was during this period of his life between 20 and 30,

after he got married, that he did become, he identified himself as a bear hunter. Probably more than anything, as far as a backwoodsman, is that he was a bear hunter. And to him, that meant bear hunting with dogs. The purebred dogs in America,

at that time would have been variants of foxhounds and big game dogs brought over by Europeans. George Washington was an avid houndsman. And then, of course, the German plots who developed their own breed of hounds specifically for bear in the southern Appalachians. If you hadn't seen our video on the Meteor YouTube channel on Plot Hounds and Bear Grease Hall of Famer Roy Clark, you should check it out. Like Daniel Boone, Crockett was involved in market hunting. Here's an excerpt from Michael Wallace's,

his book, David Crockett, the Lion of the West. And if I was recommending the best Crockett biography that I've read, I would recommend Wallace's book. Both bear meat and bear oil from the layers of fat were in great demand across the American frontier and well beyond. Bear pelts were fabricated into a variety of goods, including rugs, bedrobes, coats, and tall, dressy fur caps, fashioned from the prize, thick, glossy fur of a mother bear with her cubs and proudly worn by various army regiments. As early as the mid-1700s, colonial America exported thousands of bear pelts. By the time of Crockett who took to the woods with his hounds and long gun,

great quantities of bare fat and oil stowed in barrels or sewn up in deer skins were being shipped by barges down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, eastern seaboard cities and European markets. In the field following a kill, hunters wrapped the butchered meat in the bear's own skin and carried the oil home in the bear's bladder. The oil was clarified by boiling it with shaved, slippery elm bark and then stored for later use.

The bladder could be used as an oil cloth for wrapping packages and the fat served as cooking oil, lamp fuel, various home ribbities, and insect repellent. Smart hunters such as Crockett sometimes followed the example of many Indian tribes and slathered bare fat on them to protect their bodies from the cold. Bear oil clarified with slippery elm bark. I've never tried that. But storing oil in animal bladders is a Native American practice

and clearly Crockett or his people got this from them. When the bladder dries, it becomes semi-translucent. And when left for several months, it separates into a beautiful, clear, amber liquid and a white opaque portion settles to the bottom. It's cream white on the bottom and looks like olive oil on the top. The separation line of these distinct sections mysteriously changes. Sometimes the line is completely sharp and flat. Other days it's a thicker, cloudy mix.

Sometimes odd shapes emerge in this transition zone. Some Native Americans believed you could forecast the weather with bare oil in a translucent bladder. I've been watching bare oil in mason jars for well over a decade, and it's clear that it changes with the weather and temperature. In a world without Doppler radar and communication, anything, and I mean anything, that indicated any insight into weather patterns was observed and noted. This wasn't spooky spiritual voodoo, but humans being humans and using their brain and spirit to note patterns, correlations, and make conclusions is normal. I'm fully convinced that there is a 100% scientific explanation to bear oil's presumable reaction to barometric pressure, but I'm also 100% fully convinced that the spirit

realm is more real than this natural realm, and if my life depended on it, I'd have my spirit running full throttle when I was looking at that grease line. In view of the chronology of Crockett's life, it's 1813. He's 27 years old, living in Middle Tennessee and Lincoln County with Paul. Polly and the kids. In 1875, Crockett biographer John Abbott wrote about Crockett's frontier life, and he said, quote, he loved to wander in busy idleness all the day with fishing rod and rifle, and he would often return at night with a very ample supply of game. He would then lounge about his hut, tanning deer skins for moccasins and breeches, performing other little jobs,

and entirely neglecting all endeavors to improve his farm or to add to, the appearance of comfort of the miserable shanty which he called home. End of quote. This sounds like a harsh critique, but Abbott also pointed out Crockett's strength. Quote, he had an act of mind and a very singular command of the language of the low, illiterate life, and especially backwood slang. Though not exactly a vain man, his self-confidence was imperturbable. And there was perhaps not an individual in the world whom he,

looked up to in any sense as his superior. In his hunting skill, he became very remarkable, and few, even of the best marksman, could throw a bullet with more unerring aim. End of quote. This marksmanship skill and this self-confidence would come in handy in other places. A monumental event would take place that would change the course of his life. War. It's 1813 as this enormous nation of Indians in Alabama and Georgia, the Muscogee's. Whites call them the Creeks. And they got into a war between different factions, became the Creek War. And particularly a militant group were called the Red Sticks.

And they were very angry at their kinsmen who were so friendly to the white people and selling them land and marrying white people. So they got in this conflict, and the war really began at a place called burnt corn, where one faction killed some of the upper Greeks, the Red Sticks. And in revenge, the Red Sticks attacked Fort Mims, which is just north of Mobile, and killed everybody. The Fort Mims massacre. There were a lot of white people there, too. And word of this terrible massacre got out.

I mean, some people say it was 340 they killed, and some people say it was 400 and 500. It was a lot of people. At the time, it was really significant. Fort Mims. It spread over the country, but especially into Tennessee, was just north of that. And people were already afraid of Greeks.

So this reached Middle Tennessee, where Crockett was. It actually reached him before it reached Nashville, where Andrew Jackson heard about it. And immediately they started forming militias to go down and attack the crime. creeks. Now we're talking about 18, end of 1813, 1814, and already there was a war going on, the war of 1812. And the Red Stick, Creeks, had an alliance with the British and even of the Spanish. So this has become part of the war of 1812.

The Shawnee leader, Ticompsa visited the creeks in Alabama in 1811 with his doctrine of Indian unification and resistance to white expansion. His words split the Creek Nation and instigated the war. It's interesting how all these guys' lives were connected. In his autobiography, Crockett gave insight into how Polly didn't want him to go to war. And he wrote, quote, If every man would wait till his wife got willing for him to go to war, there would be no fight and done until we would all be killed in our houses.

That I was able to go as any man in the world, and that I believed it was a duty I owed my country. End of quote. Crockett enlisted and fought under Andrew Jackson in the Creek War. It was here that he began to build a case against Jackson that would define his life. Jackson was 20 years older than Crockett, and they would both later emerge as famous, populist Tennessee politicians. But during the war, this is where their beef started.

Andrew Jackson had a terrible trouble. feeding his army because the people who had contracted bringing these loads of food to them got lost or dishonest people some of them so it's a starving army and and uh crockett becomes very well known because he's the best hunter there and you've got and you know bring in some venison the uh but he is caught up in some of this terrible fighting the worst point really lowest point is the attack and the burning of the town of talusahatchi They do burn it and kill the people. They kill everybody.

And they later return there because there's some potatoes in the basement of the house. The bodies, they burn, the grease drip down. And the rest of his life, I mean, he's affected that. He doesn't like potatoes because he ate them. They were very hungry. Yeah. They were covered. So basically burning human flesh roasted these potatoes that were under the cellar,

and they were so hungry that they ate them. Indeed. He never forgot it. And two other things that's very important in the Greek war for Crockett. One, he brought a message to Colonel Calfey, who was his commander, that there were some red sticks roving in a certain area. And the colonel didn't pay any attention to what he said until a lieutenant came and told him the same thing. And this may be the beginning of Crockett's contempt for officers and upper classes just ignored him. Titles. Title.

Yeah, that burned him. He never forgot that. Yeah. Other thing was very important is in, I think it was December of 1814. These soldiers had pretty much filled out their enlistment. They hadn't brought any warm clothes for winter. It was very cold. And often they had nothing to eat.

And they got together and said, some of the officers actually one just enlisted in, that we've got to go home. And Andrew Jackson thought differently. He needed to continue the war. He hadn't destroyed the red sticks. And they were lined up to confront him. He was a tough guy, Jackson. He read out and said, thou will kill the first men who moved.

And they backed down. Crockett tells it different in his automobile. So Crockett was there. He was there. Yeah. They did a little bit later get released and go home. Three things happened in the Creek War. Crocket becomes the army's hunter and gains popularity learning how to set himself apart and engender

people's respect. Secondly, the creek slaughter at Tulsa Hatchie deeply impacts him, presumably igniting this empathy towards Native Americans. Crocket talks about how they had 50 Indians backed into a wigwam. An old woman was sitting at the doorway and she used her foot to hold the handle of the bow and her fingers to pull the string back and she shot an arrow that killed one of Crocket's buddies. He said it was the first time he'd seen a white man die by an arrow. The army opened fire on the woman and burned the wigwam and the Indians inside with the potato cellar underneath. It impacted him. Lastly, the third thing is that he starts to hate Andrew Jackson, and this rivalry would now begin to define his life. On the next

episode we're going to get into Crockett's political career and the development of his celebrity status. It's about to get fun. I told you the ride was going to be wild. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease. You can follow

me on Instagram at Clay underscore Newcomb and please leave us a review on iTunes. I'd also like to take just a second to thank Phil Taylor of Meteor. He works with heart and precision on the audio production side of bear grease. This thing wouldn't be what it is without film. I look forward to talking

with all the folks on the render next week and hearing what mischief Brent Reeves is up to on the This Country Life podcast. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag and there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a head. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't.

This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th.

Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.