David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [69]
Black Warrior’s Town, located on what the white settlers called the Black Warrior River, would not become Tuscaloosa until 1819, taking its name from tushka, meaning warrior, and lusa, meaning black, the name of the old Choctaw Chief Tuskalusa, who was defeated in battle by Hernando de Soto in 1540.6 Crockett had been to this place before, when he was a soldier and his outfit had looted stores of corn and beans from the deserted Creek settlement before burning it to ash.
Crockett and the two remaining hunters hobbled their horses for the night and stretched out for a rest. During the night, Crockett heard the bells on the horses as they freed themselves from the loose ties and took off, probably headed back to where they had started. At first light, Crockett started in pursuit of the horses on foot, carrying his rifle. For hours he looked everywhere, wading creeks, sloshing through swamps, and pushing through thick brush. At each cabin he came to along the way, Crockett was told the horses had been seen passing by, but at the end of the day there was no further sign of them. He doubled back to the last cabin he had passed and spent the night.
“From the best calculation we could make, I had walked over fifty miles that day; and the next morning I was so sore, and fatigued, that I felt like I couldn’t walk any more,”7 Crockett wrote in his Narrative. “But I was anxious to get back to where I had left my company, and so I started and went on, but mighty slowly, till after the middle of the day. I now began to feel mighty sick, and had a dreadful head-ache. My rifle was so heavy, and I felt so weak, that I lay down by the side of the trace, in a perfect wilderness too, to see if I wouldn’t get better.”
Although Crockett did not say so in his autobiography, he had been stricken with malaria, and would suffer from its effects for the rest of his life. Malaria did not exist in the Americas until the 1500s, but that changed with the coming of Spaniards and their African slaves; soon the disease spread throughout the hemisphere. The bite of infected female mosquitoes transmitted the infectious disease, which made it especially dangerous in the American South, where consistently warm temperatures allowed mosquitoes to breed year-round. Throughout the 1700s malaria struck many settlers in the southeast, causing a Scots-Irish pioneer to say that Virginia had so much malaria it was “only good for doctors and ministers,” while a German immigrant noted, “They who want to die quickly go to Carolina.”8 Malaria moved westward with the white settlers into Tennessee and all across the Mississippi Valley. Twice the capital of Alabama had to be relocated because of outbreaks of malarial fevers in the early 1820s.
Luckily for Crockett, a pair of Indians—probably friendly Choctaws—came across him as he lay sweating and trembling from chills and fever on the side of the trail. They offered Crockett some ripe melon, but he was far too ill to eat. The Indians knew what the white man was facing, and they told him the hard truth. “They then signed to me, that I would die, and be buried; a thing I was confoundedly afraid of myself.”9 Crockett asked them to take him to the nearest house, and by signing they agreed. “I got up to go; but when I rose, I reeled about like a cow with the blind staggers, or a fellow who had taken too many ‘horns.’”
He paid one of the Indians a half-dollar to carry his rifle and go with him. After they had traversed about a mile and a half, they came to a cabin. Crockett felt that he “was pretty far gone.” The people there were kind and put the stricken man to bed. “The woman did all she could for me with her warm teas, but I still continued bad enough, with a high fever, and generally out of my senses.” The next day two neighbors that Crockett knew from back home happened by, and they managed to get the sick man on a horse and take him back to the campsite