Legends of the Old West - FRONTIERSMEN Ep. 4 | Davy Crockett: “The Creek War”

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

David Crockett becomes a skilled hunter at a young age in Tennessee before war returns to the young American nation. During the War of 1812, he joins thousands of volunteers from Tennessee who are sent south to fight in the Creek War. Crockett plays a role in the pivotal Battle of Tallushatchee, but he discovers that he disdains war. When he returns home, he begins a career in politics. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. c a slash ymex colonel john coffee's plan was audacious before dawn on november 3rd 1813 roughly 900 men crept

through the woods outside of a native american village sneaking up on a native American village was difficult under any circumstance, but attempting it with 900 fighters would require discipline and a lot of luck. Yet Colonel Coffey's men were trying and succeeding. Coffey's force was a mix of mounted infantrymen, Tennessee militiamen, and Cherokee warriors. They positioned themselves to completely surround a Native American village called Talishatchie, in what is today eastern Alabama. The village was home to a couple hundred people from the Creek nation who were known as the Upper Creek. Their warriors were nicknamed the red sticks because of the wooden clubs they carried into battle, which were painted red. Two months earlier, 700 red sticks

had annihilated an American fort and killed nearly everyone inside. Colonel John Coffey's force had been sent down from Tennessee to exact a measure of revenge, but also to help one side of the Creek Civil War which had exploded in the summer of 1813. The Creek homeland sprawled across the modern areas of western Georgia, all of Alabama, and all of Mississippi. In 1813, the present-day states of Alabama and Mississippi were still part of Mississippi territory. The Upper Creek lived in the northern part of the territory, and the Lower Creek lived in the southern part near the Gulf Coast. Many of the Upper Creek were furious at the encroachment of American settlers. They vowed to fight the Americans and then their own countrymen. The Lower Creek had developed

good trade relations with American settlements, and they favored assimilation into the United States. The civil war between the Upper Creek and the Lower Creek led to the destruction of Fort Mims by Red Stick Warriors. Now, two months later, Colonel Coffey's force wanted payback and a chance to help the Lower Creek win the Civil War. In the woods outside of Talashachy, most of Coffey's 900 fighters waited to spring a trap. His men had encircled the camp before dawn without alerting the villagers, and now he put the second phase of his daring plan into motion. About an hour after sunrise, he sent many of his Tennessee militiamen forward. They had been acting as scouts for his column,

but now they were acting as bait. As they approached the village, the warriors in the settlement spotted them. The militiamen opened fire, the Red Sticks returned fire, and the skirmish drew in nearly all of the warriors from the village. At that point, the militiamen turned and ran. The warriors chased the militiamen into the woods, exactly as Colonel Coffey hoped they would. As the militiamen lured the warriors away from camp, nearly 900 men let loose with a concussive blast of musket fire. The volley shredded the front ranks of the warriors, and one of the men who used his Pennsylvania long rifle to deadly effect that morning was Davy Crockett. He was a Tennessee militiamen and a scout who had helped find the village. But Colonel Coffey kept him

with the main body of troops for the surprise attack rather than sending him forward to draw out the warriors. Now, Crockett, Coffey, and the rest of the mixed American Cherokee force charged the surviving warriors. They fought through some of the warriors and scattered others, and they kept up relentless fire as they raced into the village. Without most of the warriors, the village was at the mercy of the attackers. Some of the women and children were spared and taken prisoner, but not all. Davy Crockett was appalled by some of the horrors of the battle, but he was also surrounded by shouts of, remember Fort Mims, which became a rallying cry in honor of those who had been slaughtered by the Upper Creek two months earlier. When the fight that morning

was done, the American force had killed nearly 200 Upper Creek and turned the tide of the war. From Black Barrel Media, this is an American frontier series on Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling the stories of two of America's most famous frontiersmen, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. This is episode four, Davy Crockett, Part 1, The Creek War. The full name of the future scout, political leader, and defender of the Alamo was David Stern Crockett. He never liked the nickname Davy, but it stuck with him throughout history. He preferred to be called David, the name given to him by his parents, John and Rebecca Crockett, on August 17, 1786. He was raised in an area around the present-day town of Limestone, Tennessee, but the state of Tennessee

didn't come along until David was nine years old. Until then, the woods in which he roamed were in a region known as the State of Franklin, or sometimes the Free Republic of Franklin. The Crockett family eventually grew to include nine children. John Crockett was active in local politics, but that didn't help him make ends meet. He was a failed farmer who racked up debt. His financial problems seemed to get better when he purchased a grist mill to grind cereal grains, but a flood destroyed the mill shortly thereafter and washed away the family business. John Crockett's business ventures routinely failed, and he turned to his 12-year-old son, David, to help pay his mounting debts.

In 1798, David Crockett became an indentured servant. John Crockett made a deal with a nearby farmer. David would work on the farm for a period of time. The money David earned through his work would be paid to his father. In turn, his father would use it to pay off his debts. With the deal done, David Crockett became a cowboy, long before the term was commonplace in America. David worked for a man named Jacob Siler, and David's first job was to help Siler drive cattle 400 miles from Tennessee to Virginia. Crockett worked dutifully as a cowboy, and Siler was impressed by the boy's work ethic.

Instead of vast, dusty prairies without the sorriest excuse for a shade tree which future cowboys would face in the west, David Crockett helped drive cattle through the mountainous and heavily forested terrain of eastern Tennessee and western Virginia. He proved to be a good horseman and a valuable worker. By all accounts, Jacob Siler treated David well, and when David finished his indentured servitude several months later, Seiler invited the boy to stay on and work for him. But David was desperately homesick, and he declined the offer. He wanted to return to his family so badly that he set out alone during a brutal snowstorm.

David nearly froze to death, but he found a wagon train with people he recognized, and they took him back to his family. John and Rebecca Crockett welcomed their son home, and John supposedly cried with relief and gratitude for the work his son had done on his behalf. The family still had debts, but the money David had earned from Jacob Seiler helped a great deal. Over the next few years, David put his newfound cowboy skills to work when opportunities arose, but he never spent long away from home. As his teenage years passed, he grew to a solid and sturdy six feet tall. He was a tough, outgoing, dashing young man who caught the attention of young ladies throughout eastern Tennessee. His eye fell on a lass of Irish descent named Mary Finley, who was usually called Polly.

Polly was strong and attractive and three years younger than David, and her mother did not care for her choice of boyfriend. But David slowly charmed Polly's mother, and the couple were married on August 16, 1806, one day before David turned 21. David and Polly made their home in Jefferson County, Tennessee. He built a log cabin and proudly displayed his prized possession above the fireplace, his Pennsylvania long rifle. A rifled musket was a relatively rare and valuable weapon at the time. It featured grooves carved into the inside of the barrel, which caused a musket ball to spin as it flew out of the gun. The rifling made the gun far more accurate than the traditional smoothbore musket, and it was the same type of weapon which Daniel Boone carried throughout his life.

Like Boone, Crockett used the rifle to become an exceptional hunter in order to feed his growing family. David and Polly had two sons and a daughter over the next five years. And in another similarity to Daniel Boone, David Crockett turned out to be far better at hunting than farming. In 1813, two years after his daughter was born, Crockett moved his family west to Franklin County, where he thought the soil might be better. The second farm was no easier than the first, though it probably wasn't the fault of the farm.

More than likely, the trouble lay with a farmer. Again, like Daniel Boone, David Crockett was a naturally gifted woodsman, and it was far more exciting and fun to spend time hunting in the woods than it was to spend time plowing the fields. But by the end of the year, Crockett wouldn't have to worry about farming. As it had during Daniel Boone's time, war started to dominate the landscape. For Boone, it had been a war of independence for 13 British colonies in America.

For Crockett, it was a war between the new United States of America and the Old Empire of Great Britain. The United States and Great Britain had signed the peace. Treaty, which officially recognized the new American nation in 1783, and it took just 20 years for the two countries to go back to war. The new nation declared war on the old empire on June 18, 1812, after five years of growing problems involving international trade. Most of the fighting occurred far away from Crockett's life in Tennessee, but by 1813, British forces turned their attention to the American frontier. A struggle was brewing in Mississippi territory, and the British hoped to use it to their advantage. The Creek tribe, who were also known as the

Muskogee, was descending into civil war. From western Georgia, across the modern-day states of Alabama and Mississippi, the Upper Creek were openly hostile toward the Lower Creek, Cherokee, and any white settlers in their vicinity. American pioneers had encroached on Creek land for years. The Upper Creek wanted to fight back, while the Lower Creek wanted to work with the American settlers. The British threw their support behind the Upper Creek, whose warriors were nicknamed the Red Sticks. In an effort to defeat the U.S., the British provided resources for the Red Sticks to launch attacks against frontier towns. Tennesseans braced themselves for the bloodshed to move north to their state, and they began calling up militia units. Many, like Davy

Crockett had little interest in becoming involved in a Creek Civil War, but attitudes shifted when they heard about Fort Mims. Fighting in Mississippi Territory, though mostly within the modern boundaries of Alabama, spread and intensified throughout June and July of 1813. As a result, people fled farms and settlements to seek shelter in forts. Roughly 400 people crowded into the stockade walls of Fort Mims, about 35 miles north of Mobile. They were a mix of Lower Creek Villagers, white settlers, and slaves. Somewhere around 150 fighters protected the fort, a collection of Mississippi Territorial Volunteers and American and Creek Militiamen. The commander of the

Mississippi Volunteers was in charge of the fort, and his superior officer expressed concern about the fort's condition during a visit in early August. Apparently, the The refugees had been in the fort for long enough without suffering an attack that they had become complacent. The general who visited the fort recommended a series of improvements to help strengthen the position, but the Mississippi volunteer commander did none of them. Reportedly, the situation got worse. By the end of August, the people in the fort were leaving the gates wide open. The commander had not strengthened the palisade walls. He had not sent out regular patrols to scout for war parties. Now he was allowing the gates to stand open and virtually unguarded.

And that was when the Red Sticks attacked. At midday on August 30th, 1813, roughly 1,000 warriors rushed the gates of the fort. They cut down nearly all of the 100 Mississippi Territorial Volunteers in the first couple minutes of the assault, including the commander. Warriors streamed into the fort and terrified civilians retreated to buildings deeper in the stockade. The militiamen who were left after the initial onslaught found themselves divided into groups. Many found shelter in a blockhouse, but the warriors quickly overran it. By early afternoon, the refugees were isolated in two buildings. They put up a strong defense until the warriors launched volleys of flaming arrows at the wooden buildings.

As fires tore through the buildings, the flames forced the people outside, and the Red Stick Warriors slaughtered them. Some accounts say a few lucky people found ways to escape the fort, and a few others were captured, but other accounts say the warriors killed every man, woman, and child in Fort Mims. Regardless, the discrepancies were minimal. The Fort Mims massacre was by far the biggest and bloodiest engagement of the war up to that time. In response, the governor of Tennessee authorized the commander of his state's militia, General Andrew Jackson, to take a force south to help. Jackson brought in his friend, Colonel John Coffey, to lead part of the expedition,

and a frontiersman in Franklin County named Davy Crockett signed up with Coffey's militia to avenge Fort Mims. Davy Crockett gathered his bedroll, weapons, and extra clothes, and he saddled his horse. His battle kit featured his trusty hunting knife, a tomahawk, which he could wield and throw up row with deadly accuracy, and his 45-caliber Pennsylvania long rifle. Crockett left his wife and three children on September 20th and joined a company of mounted riflemen who served under Colonel Coffey. Coffee's force numbered about a thousand, and they were all under the overall command of General Andrew Jackson. Jackson sent Coffey's men South immediately, while he, Jackson, stayed in Tennessee to finish raising the full force of

5,000 men which had been authorized by the Tennessee legislature. For more than a month, Crockett and the rest of Coffey's Command searched Northern Alabama for red sticks. The threat of ambush was constant, which wore on the men's nerves. The red sticks remained elusive, and patients began to wear thin in Coffey's command. In October, General Jackson, with the main force from Tennessee, rendezvoused with Coffey's advance column. Toward the end of the month, Jackson heard about a large body of Red Stick Warriors in a village called Talashachi, and he ordered coffee to attack it. Coffee led about a thousand men in the direction of the village, though no one knew its exact location. As they believed they drew closer, coffee sent some of his Tennessee

militia scouts, including Davy Crockett, on a reconnaissance mission to find the village. The small group moved quickly but quietly through the thick brush and trees of eastern Alabama until they all stopped in unison. They heard voices floating through the woods. Crockett and the scouts moved toward the sounds. As they neared a clearing, they saw a settlement. There were round houses with domes designed to keep occupants insulated during winter. Women and children moved about the homes doing chores.

More importantly, the scouts noticed warriors, red-stick warriors. The scouts hurried back to Colonel Coffey and relayed their information. About an hour after dawn on November 3rd, Coffee launched the attack and totally surprised the village. A force of scouts lured the warriors out of the camp where the rest of Coffey's men, including Crockett, unleashed a devastating ambush. Most of the warriors fell in the first barrage from Coffey's men, and the troops charged at those who remained. Coffey's men tore through the village,

where the fight took on shades of a slaughter. Some inhabitants received mercy, but not many, as the fighters shouted, remember Fort Mims as a rally cry, and burned the village. Coffey's command killed nearly 200 Upper Creek while losing only five men in the process. The battle turned the tide of the Creek War.

It convinced many of the Upper Creek to stop fighting, and on a personal level, it was pivotal for Davy Crockett. He never admitted to killing anyone during the battle, but he was disgusted by the slaughter. The battle remained stamped in his memory years later, and it contributed to his distaste for warfare and his sympathy for tribes in the southeastern United States. Colonel Coffey was later criticized for the deaths of so many non-combatants, but he defended himself and his men by arguing that the retreating warriors, hid in their homes, which endangered their wives and children.

If the warriors had stayed in the fight, the so-called collateral damage would not have been as high. Regardless, it didn't sit well with Crockett. But he didn't have time to dwell on it. Six days after defeating the Red Sticks at Talashachie, Crockett and the rest of Coffey's men joined General Jackson in what became known as the Battle of Talladega. Talladega was a creek town, and about a hundred Creek who were loyal to the U.S. were trapped inside.

They were surrounded by 700 to 1,000 red-stick warriors under the leadership of a man named William Weatherford. When Jackson heard about the siege, he immediately marched a column to relieve the town. He hoped a decisive victory would end the war, but his men were not able to completely surround the attackers the way Coffey's men had done Tallahatchie. Weatherford and several hundred warriors escaped, but Jackson's force overwhelmed those who remained. The American Coalition killed more than 300 red-stick warriors and broke the siege of Talladega. Davy Crockett and the Tennessee militiamen served admirably in two furious battles in less than a week, but they, like all the men in Jackson's army, were struggling due to a severe lack of supplies. The wagon train with supplies was long overdue.

and Jackson personally led a march to find it in mid-November. Luckily, the wagon train was, in fact, on its way to resupply Jackson's army, and when the hungry men found it, they gorged themselves. But the men needed more than just food. Their horses were done in, and their clothes were rotting. As the weather turned colder, with December coming on, Crockett and many of the Tennessee volunteers told General Jackson that they needed to go home to resupply and check on their families.

Jackson barked at them and said he would shoot them for mutiny. Crockett and the militiamen called Jackson's bluff. Not wanting to alienate good men or have to explain why he shot his own troops, Jackson relented. Crockett and some of the Tennessee volunteers headed north with the promise that they would come back to continue the campaign. Crockett departed Jackson's force in December, and he returned home to spend Christmas with his wife and children. While he was gone, a lot changed in the War of 1812.

For a few months, the heaviest fighting happened along the American-Canadian border. Then, on March 27, 1814, four months after Crockett took his leave, his comrades from Tennessee fought in their third major engagement. General Andrew Jackson's army crushed an army of redstick warriors in a vicious five-hour fight called the Battle of Horseshoe Bend near present-day Dadeville, Alabama. In large part due to Jackson's victory, the Upper Creek, whose warriors were the Red Sticks, agreed to sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson, which gave 23 million acres of land to the U.S. Five months later, the British landed troops in Maryland.

They invaded Washington, D.C., burned the White House, and then turned their attention toward Baltimore. British warships spent 24 hours bombarding Fort McHenry to convince Americans to surrender the position. A lawyer named Francis Scott Key watched the bombardment, and he was certain he would see the British flag flying above the fort when the sun came up on the second day. At dawn, when the American flag still flew over the ramparts, he was inspired to run. write a poem called Defense of Fort McHenry. He scribbled the first verse immediately and then added three more verses before the poem was published in local newspapers. Within a week, he and his brother-in-law had set the words to the music of a popular British tune and turned the poem into a

song. The most common belief is that a Baltimore publisher came up with the idea of changing the title to The Star-Spangled Banner. Around the time, Francis Scott Key unknowingly etched his mark on American history, Davy Crockett returned to the army. Crockett had squeaked out nearly nine months of leave before reporting for duty in September 1814. He hated combat and he didn't like the idea of killing people, but since he was a man of his word, he returned as promised. Crockett expected to continue fighting the Red Sticks, but that fight was mostly done. Now, in September 1814, the focus was on ending the British threat once and for all. Crockett became a sergeant in a new unit called the East Tennessee Volunteer Mounted Gunmen.

Sergeant David Crockett's unit joined a larger force of 1,000 men, who were led by now Brigadier General, John Coffey. The objective was to catch up to Jackson's army, which had recently won the Battle of Pensacola in Florida, and was now rushing west to protect New Orleans from the British. Ultimately, Crockett's unit and Coffey's command never made it. They ended up fighting sporadic skirmishes against the remaining Red Stick warriors who were still in the field, and then they had big supply problems. Once again, the column ran dangerously low on food. If some reports are to be believed, Crockett almost single-handedly kept his unit fed. He went into the woods and hunted without rest. And during one hunting trip, he ended up in a desperate hand-to-hand fight with

a red-stick warrior. Crockett finally clubbed the warrior with his rifle and killed him. It was Crockett's first confirmed kill as a soldier, and he wouldn't be a soldier for much longer. December 1814, representatives of the U.S. and Great Britain met in Belgium to discuss a peace treaty. They signed the treaty to end the war on December 24th. Britain ratified it four days later, but it still had to travel across the Atlantic Ocean to be approved by American leaders. Ten days after Great Britain agreed to the treaty, General Andrew Jackson's army defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans, and Jackson became an American legend in the process. Five weeks after the battle, in February 1815, the U.S. ratified the peace treaty, and the war was officially over.

Davy Crockett returned home to his wife and children that spring. He said leaving military service was a joyous occasion. After receiving his discharge papers from General John Coffey, Crockett said, This closed out my career as a warrior, and I am glad of it. When Crockett returned to Franklin County in the spring of 1815, he was a moment. happy to see his cabin, his wife, and his children. But Crockett's joy at returning home was short-lived. His wife, Polly, became seriously ill. Before long, she was bedridden, and nothing seemed to stop her decline. The illness was either unknown or unidentified, and she clung to life for

several painful months before she passed away at the age of 27. David Crockett was 29 years old, and now he had to raise three small children on his own and run his farm. He didn't wait long to marry again, and some have surmised that it was a marriage of necessity rather than love. He married a war widow named Elizabeth Patton. She had 250 acres of land, and a couple of children who were close in age to Crockets. The marriage was good by all accounts, and the couple had three children of their own over the next few years. But Davy Crockett, like Daniel Boone, had a restless spirit, and he couldn't see into the future. He said his career as a warrior was done, but it wasn't.

His regional celebrity status as a well-known soldier and woodsman would help him get into local politics. Local politics would lead to statewide politics and then national politics. And then, that restless spirit would draw him to the new western frontier of Texas. David Crockett, along with hundreds of other Tennesseans, would stream into Texas to help settlers carve out a new republic from Old Mexico. Next time on Legends of the Old West, David Crockett enters the world of politics. He becomes a highly respected figure whose woodsman reputation becomes folklore like Daniel Boones.

But Crockett spars with his former general, Andrew Jackson, and he experiences turmoil in his political career, while Sam Houston helps lead a rebellion in Texas, which will soon call to Crockett's restless spirit. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program receive each new season to binge all at once with no commercials, as well as exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, or subscribe directly on Apple Podcasts through the podcast. show page. This series was written and researched by Michael Meglish. It was produced by Joe Garrow. Original music by Rob Valier. I'm Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.