THE ALMANAC(K)S

1835 - 1856

   The Davy Crockett Almanacs, produced as mass-market newspapers from 1835 to 1856 in various cities of the United States, were wildly popular across the country. Over those 20-odd years, five different publishers put out 55 issues. They packaged standard almanac information with a series of increasing outlandish, brutal, and finally racist and expansionistic anecdotes concerning the legend of Davy.
   The first issues, which started in the year 1884 (but with almanac information for the coming year of 1885), were purportedly produced in Nashville -- but in fact created on the East Coast. They essentially borrowed material from Sketches and Eccentricities of Colonel David Crockett, a biographical book that the real Crockett disliked intensely. (Although it was probably more because he wasn't getting any royalties than because of the portrayal.)
   They mainly featured hunting stories and brags that had circulated the country, making Crockett a famous man. Soon the legend of Davy was combined with Nimrod Wildfire, the character based on Crockett in The Lion of the West.
   In the 1837 Almanac, the illustration on the cover is actually a woodcut based on a poster of James Hackett, who played Wildfire. (Sketches itself borrowed liberally from the same play.)
   But after Crockett's death in 1836, the authors were free to write anything they pleased. At first, they announced a new editor, "Ben Harding," who was in fact based on Ben Hardin, another Whig Congressman, from Kentucky. Harding announced that Davy was being held prisoner in Mexico, working in the mines. He posted a letter from Crockett, asking for his help in escape. Harding was apparently going to become the main character of the Almanacs -- but unfortunately for the authors, this Whig Congressman was still alive -- and a lawyer. So after he threatened action, his character changed into a one-legged sailor, unrecognizable as the real land-based Kentucky resident, and stayed on as "editor" in the ensuing issues.

EXPLANATORY PREFACE: It is somewhat of an anomaly (though not in the case of Almanac makers) for a person to publish anything after their decease. But the fact is Col. Crockett had prepared the matter for this year's Almanac before he went to Texas. And the last year's one having such an immense sale, he was induced to prepare matter and illustrations for several Almanacs. So that his absence for two or three years should not prevent the Almanac's being published, so that his family might have the benefit of it. From a careful perusal of his manuscript writings, there is enough to make six almanacs after the present one, and they will continue to be published until 1843. Col. Crockett was always wide awake and duly sober, but of a restless disposition. And after he lost his election to Congress, he found the bears had got so thinned out, that he should soon want for employment. The news of the invasion of Texas by the Mexicans having arrived at this time, and many of his old friends and neighbors having gone there to settle, he determined to go and lend them a hand to whip the Mexicans. The sketches of Texas are taken from the letters he wrote home. And a correct account is given of his last days and death at the siege of Bexar, where he fell fighting with the greatest bravery.-- 1837 Crockett Almanack, page 2

   With that, Davy Crockett broke free of the Mexican mines, and was free to roam everywhere that his real-life counterpart no longer could. He roamed the world with his pet bear, "Death Hug," free of the shackles of fact and biography. He rides an alligator up Niagra Falls, and he dives for pearls in Japan. At first these stories just expanded on the legend of David and the tall tales he would spin, but soon "Davy" became the official symbol for expansionism and Manifest Destiny.
   The real man who had fought for Indian rights gave way to a mass-market fictional character who said that Indians liked a "drink of white baby's blood nearly as well as whiskey." The Congressman who had championed the rights of poor people on undeveloped lands now caught squatters and forced them to eat cow turds off the ground with a cane fork. In other words, the man who the Whigs had championed as a true Republican now became the Jacksonian mascot, killing "red niggers" and giving their eyes to his girlfriend, Sal Fungus, as jewelry. (For some reason his wives and girlfriends are always named "Sal," and usually ugly.)
   In the 1846 Almanac, Davy decapitates some Indians who were caught stealing his horse fodder, and "the red nigger's sap both watered and manured my field, till it war as red an striped, as Uncle Sam's flag." Somehow the starving Creek War scout who unhappily recounted having to eat potatoes stewed in the oils of burning Indians now ate them for the pleasure of it, and fertilized his fields with them. If David disliked his characterization in Sketches, you can only imagine how he would have reacted to this stuff.
   Strangely enough, these Almanacs seem to have been created by Whig sympathizers, who apparently thought it best to sneak their political message in between attacks on squatters, Pukes (Missourians), Yankees, women, and every ethnic group known to man.
   Eventually, around the time of the Civil War, Crockett's star faded as a jingoistic political icon, and he was replaced by the heroes of the day, like Kit Carson. With the Almanacs out of the way, Crockett evolved into a less-homicidal, salt-of-the-earth backwoodsman in theatrical plays and romantic novels , in which Crockett morphed from a "ring-tailed roarer" with the ugliest woman in Tennessee into a nature-loving Momma's boy who longed for a sweet girl out of his class, teaching him to read.
   America kept growing and developing, and Crockett's legend changed right along with it.