David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [21]
As Franklin began to collapse, Sevier became involved with some last-ditch intrigues to gain control of Indian lands and even considered an alliance with Spain. Eventually, some of his property was seized for back taxes, and Sevier was arrested on a charge of treason under North Carolina state law. In 1789 he received a pardon and won election to the North Carolina Senate. The following year, the State of Franklin was declared dead, and the land that soon became Tennessee was again ceded by North Carolina to the federal government. During the territorial period, Sevier went to the First U.S. Congress from North Carolina, and on June 1, 1796, when Tennessee joined the Union as the sixteenth state, Sevier was elected the first governor, an office he held for several terms.23
By that date, the family of John Crockett had been gone from their cabin on the Nolichucky for almost four years. David was about nine years old when this move took place, and in writing in his Narrative later in life, he could vividly remember but one traumatic experience. After the passage of more than forty-five years, Crockett described what he witnessed as if it had just happened.
My four elder brothers, and a well-grown boy of about fifteen years old, by the name of Campbell, and myself, were all playing on the river’s side; when all of the rest of them got into my father’s canoe, and put out to amuse themselves on the water, leaving me on the shore alone. Just a little distance below them, there was a fall in the river, which went slap-right straight down. My brothers, though they were little fellows, had been used to paddling the canoe, and could have carried it safely anywhere about there; but this fellow Campbell wouldn’t let them have the paddle, but, fool like, undertook to manage it himself. I reckon he had never seen a water craft before; and it went just any way but the way he wanted it. There he paddled, and paddled, and paddled—all the while going wrong,—until, in a short time, here they were going, straight forward, stern foremost, right plump to the falls; and if they had only a fair shake, they would have gone over as slick as a whistle. It was’ent this, thought, that scared me; for I was so infernal mad that they had left me on the shore, that I had as soon seen them all go over the falls a bit, as any other way. But their danger was seen by a man the name of Kendall, but I’ll be shot if it was Amos; for I believe I would know him yet if I was to see him. This man Kendall was working in a field on the bank, and knowing there was no time to lose, he started full tilt, and he come like a cane brake afire; and as he ran, he threw off his coat, and then his jacket, and then his shirt, for I know when he got to the water he had nothing on but his breeches. But seeing him in such a hurry, and tearing off his clothes as he went, I had no doubt but that the devil or something else was after him—and close on him, too—as he was running within an inch of his life. This alarmed me, and I screamed out like a young painter [panther]. But Kendall didn’t stop for this. He went ahead all might, and as full bent on saving the boys…. When he came to the water he plunged in, and where it was too deep to wade he would swim, and where it was shallow enough he went bolting on; and by such exertion as I never saw at any other time in my life, he reached the canoe, when it was within twenty or thirty feet of the falls; and so great was the suck, and so swift the current, that poor Kendall had a hard time of it to stop them at last, as Amos will to stop the mouths of the people about his stockjobbing. But he hung on to the canoe, till he got it stop’d, and then draw’d it out of danger. When they got