"Eighteen thirteen the Creeks uprose, Addin' redskin arrows to the country's woes. Now, Injun fightin' is somethin' he knows, So he shoulders his rifle an' off he goes. Davy -- Davy Crockett, The man who don't know fear!"*

CHOCKTAW WARRIOR

Fighting Injuns -- or hiring somebody to do it for him.

   In 1813, some negligent guards at Fort Mims in Alabama are playing cards with the gate open when the Creek Indians attack. The guards can't close the gate when it becomes stuck in the sand, and the Indians swarm into the fort. The five hundred men, women and children inside are slaughtered in a brutal, bloody massacre. (Ironically, many of the settlers and soldiers inside are in fact half-breeds, including trader Samuel Mims, who runs the fort.).
   There is an instant outcry from white settlers (especially the ones living illegally on Indian lands). A general meeting of the militia is called to raise volunteers, and David is one of the first to join up. He fears that the Indian attacks will spread (the fact that his grandparents had been murdered by a band of them will make you worry that way) and he decides to join the militia and fight. Polly begs David not to go (click here for an R-rated version); pleading that she will be left alone in the wilderness to raise two young children. (Not to mention the fact that there is also a great amount of crime on the frontier due to disenfranchised white bandits who prey on secluded farms.) But David, eager to experience war, wants to fight:

Click here for an R-rated version!

"I reasoned the case with her as well as I could, and told her, that if every man would wait till his wife got willing for him to go to war, there would be no fighting done, until we would all be killed in our houses ; that I was as able to go as any man in the world ; and that I believed it was a duty I owed my country ... The truth is, my dander was up, and nothing but war could bring it right again."
-- David Crockett, 1834; "A Narrative in the Life of David Crockett"

   David enlists with a militia unit forming in Winchester under Andrew Jackson--or as David calls him throughout his life, "Old Hickory-face." The officer in charge there, Major Gibson, splits the force, picking out the best backwoodsmen to use as scouts. He recruits David to lead a company of them into Indian country. In turn, David chooses George Russell to ride with him. Gibson says Russell's too young -- he can't even grow a beard; David replies, that if beards were the sole requirement he'd choose a billy goat. It was from these characters that Walt Disney would re-create the Davy Crockett legend 140 years later. But real life is not like Disney would have us believe:

   On November 3, 1813, David participates in the massacre of the Indian town of Tallusahatchee with Andrew Jackson's army. Starving, the soldiers are forced to eat potatoes from the cellar of a burned building, stewed in the "boiled juices" of the Indians in the house (I guess Walt decided to leave this out of the children's show):

"No provisions had yet breached us, and we now had been for several days on half rations. However we went back to our Indian town on the next day, when many of the carcasses of the Indians were still to be seen. They looked very awful, for the burning had not entirely consumed them, but given them a very terrible appearance, at least what remained of them. It was, somehow or other, found out that the house had a potatoe (sic) cellar under it, and an immediate examination was made, for we were all as hungry as wolves. We found a fine chance of potatoes in it, and hunger compelled us to eat them, though I had a little rather not, if I could have helped it, for the oil of the Indians we had burned up on the day before had run down on them, and they looked like they had been stewed with fat meat."
-- David Crockett, 1834; "A Narrative in the Life of David Crockett"

"This closed my career as a warrior, and I am glad of it, for I like life now a heap better than I did then; and I am glad all over that I lived to see these times, which I should not have if I had kept fooling along in war, and got used up at it."
-- David Crockett, 1834; "A Narrative in the Life of David Crockett" (two years before the Alamo)

FUN FACT: General Andrew Jackson once had a 17 year-old soldier executed for not cleaning his cooking gear -- but only after Jackson removed himself from the sound of the firing squad. On his deathbed many years later, Jackson said his only regrets were over two bitter political opponents -- who he wished he would have killed when he had the chance.

   In 1815, David comes home to find Polly sick with malaria. Now needed to run the farm, he hires a substitute to serve his final days in the army (yes it was legal), and promises to never participate in war again.
   Meanwhile Andrew Jackson defeats the Creeks and becomes the most celebrated military leader since George Washington. He negotiates with the Creeks on behalf of the U.S. government, taking 23 million acres of their land -- half of which immediately go to Jackson's friends and political allies.
   Of course, David is not a member of Jackson's upper-class. He still lives in a modest squatter's cabin, without enough land to qualify for political office. His third child, Margaret, is born that summer -- but soon after, Polly Crockett dies at the age of 27. David buries Polly in the woods and marks her grave with a cairn of stones.
   David is informed that the Franklin County Militia has elected him lieutenant. It's his first public office, but having an officer for a father is scant consolation to children who are now without a mother.
   David soon realizes he is not capable of doing what he'd forced Polly to do for much of the time they were married: raise a family alone. David's brother and sister-in-law move in to help, but it's not enough. David decides his children need a mother (and he needs a wife). So the "Go-ahead" man goes right ahead into another marriage...

"BETSY"

   In 1815, David marries rich war widow Elizabeth Patton (her husband -- her first cousin James -- had died in the Creek War). She has two kids who are about the same ages as David's youngest two, a "snug little farm" (which holds more than the 200 acres David will need to qualify to run for the legislature), and $800 cash, which is a large sum on the frontier. During the wedding ceremony at her farm, a pig breaks into the house and runs down the aisle instead of Elizabeth. David boots the pig out, saying: "I'll be doing all the grunting around here from now on, old hook..."
   In the fall, Crockett and three neighbors leave to explore Alabama. While separated from his friends, David experiences a full-blown attack of malaria. A band of Creek Indians find him, try to feed him, and signal to him that he is dying. Using sign language, he convinces them to take him to the nearest cabin. He is speechless and practically comatose for two weeks, and his neighbors finally leave him and return to Tennessee. Weeks later he finally returns to Elizabeth, who cries out in shock -- because David's neighbors had informed her upon their return that he had died. David later recounts, "I know'd that was a whapper of a lie, as soon as I heard it.".
   1817: The Crocketts move to Shoal Creek in Lawrence County, Tennessee. His neighbors (mostly members of the Crockett and Patton families, who tend to band together on the frontier) informally choose him to be backwoods magistrate. David has never seen a legal document before in his life, and can barely write, but David is soon known as a fair and honest man, and never has a ruling overturned..
   Crockett then serves as justice of the peace, and finally as town commissioner, taking an active role in the formation of the new government. He sets out on a new career that will change his life, and create a legend...