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By Root 235 0

as always, was finding something decent to eat. “At the start we had taken only twenty days ration of flour, and eight days rations of beef,”27 wrote Crockett. “We were, therefore, in extreme suffering for want of something to eat, and exhausted from our exposure and the fatigues of our journey. I remember well, that I had not myself tasted bread but twice in nineteen days.” Several men accompanied by their Indian allies rode point to find provisions while the army kept on the move. Crockett did his part to fend off starvation. “As the army marched, I hunted every day, and would kill every hawk, bird, and squirrel that I could find. Others did the same; and it was a rule with us, that when we stop’d at night, the hunters would throw all they killed in a pile, and then we would make a general division among all the men.”

Crockett was convinced that he had to take control of the dire situation when, one day while searching the camp for food for a sick soldier, he came across two of his officers eating broiled gizzards after they had divided the turkey flesh among their men. “And now seeing that every fellow must shift for himself, I determined that in the morning I would come up missing; so I took my mess and cut out to go ahead of the army. We know’d that nothing more could happen to us if we went than if we staid, for it looked like it was to be starvation any way; we therefore determined to go on the old saying, root hog or die.”28 This adage went back to early settlement days, when hogs were commonly turned loose to forage for themselves rather than being fed. It came to stand for frontiersmen who were often in dire straits and also had to root around for whatever they could find to survive. For a man like Crockett, it was a phrase that stood for self-reliance.

After several days of finding no quarry, Crockett began to weaken. “We all began to get nearly ready to give up the ghost, and lie down and die.” He brought back some small game, and two turkeys. They also found a bee tree loaded with good honey and used their tomahawks to open the tree. Crockett found a bear, but without dogs he could only watch it disappear in the trees. Soon after that he shot a large buck deer and got the dressed venison back to camp just in time. William Russell was just about to shoot his own horse to feed the men when Crockett appeared with fresh meat. Crockett and his friend handed out all the meat and the honey.29 Later Crockett swapped some of his powder and bullets with an Indian in exchange for two hatfuls of parched corn, which he brought back to the other soldiers.

By late December 1814, several weeks before Jackson’s appointment in New Orleans, Crockett and his fellow troops were headed home. Their time was up and the war was close to ending for them and everyone else. When they reached the Coosa River near Fort Strother, they met troops from east Tennessee on their way to Mobile. In the ranks Crockett found his younger brother, John, as well as some old neighbors and friends he had not seen in years.30 It was, in fact, a sweet reunion. They gave Crockett plenty of provisions for himself and his horse and he stayed with them for a night before they continued on to Mobile.

“Here I had enough to go on, and after remaining a few days, cut out for home.” And with that, David Crockett’s time as a soldier came to an end, and not a day too soon.

EIGHTEEN

CABIN FEVER

WHAT SOME PEOPLE called America’s “Second War of Independence” ended in a blaze of glory, and soon led to a surge in national pride that swept the country. The peace agreement with Britain signed at Ghent in Belgium in 1814, followed early the following year by General Jackson’s anticlimatic but stunning victory at New Orleans, lifted American’s spirits and marked a time of significant change as the nation came of age. “Never did a country occupy more lofty ground,” noted U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story in 1815. “We have stood the contest, single-handed, against the conqueror of Europe; and we are at peace, with all our blushing victories thick crowding