David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [8]
Savvy hunters were aware of the bears’ nonretractable curved claws that allowed them to bring down a deer or a hound with one powerful blow. Bears also used the claws to scramble up trees, especially when they spied wild grapevines or if snarling dogs were in close pursuit. For Crockett, bear hunting with dogs was like no other hunting. He loved the adrenaline rush as he fought for breath and tried to keep up behind a pack of baying hounds on the trail of a bear crashing through the brush. For a seasoned and passionate hunter like Crockett, the chorus of dog howls was sweet music.
Much like the human company he kept, Crockett preferred the company of mongrel hounds to purebred dogs with fancy pedigrees. A few of the names that Crockett supposedly bestowed on his dogs include Soundwell, Old Rattler, Tiger, and Sport. One account suggests that Crockett named his favorite hound Jolar, said to be an ancient Gaelic-Scots word for eagle-eyed.6 No matter their names, Crockett was known to use stocky crossbred dogs that lived solely to run bears. But while running his hounds and stalking bears remained a constant passion, Crockett also found that his reputation as a fearless hunter brought other dividends. Over the course of his life, Crockett’s bear hunting ability became a key ingredient in the manufacture of the populist hypermasculine persona he often used to bolster his public image and political career.
The real Crockett successfully combined his expertise with a rifle and passion for hunting with his trademark homespun humor and masterful storytelling technique. In so doing he was able to rise from the canebrakes to the halls of Congress. The stories he gathered from his adventures as a woodsman became entertainment from the backwoods that made his campaigns original and successful. In thus putting them to use, he became one of the first notable political figures to emerge from the ranks of common men and not the landed gentry.
BORN ON A RIVERBANK IN FRANKLIN
CONTRARY TO WHAT has often been implied, mostly by Texans themselves, David Crockett was not a Texan. Crockett remained a Tennessean until his dying day. While he did meet his end during an exploratory trip in the then-Mexican state of Texas, he spent most of his life in Tennessee and more than half of those forty-nine years in the east Tennessee of his birth. Writers frequently have skimmed over Crockett’s early life in a rush to get to the period when he achieved celebrity and became well known as a colorful frontier hunter, political figure, and prominent participant in the legendary battle at the Alamo. All too often, Crockett’s two months spent in Texas at the end of his life garner more attention than the decades he spent living in Tennessee.
By all appearances, Crockett was well aware of the importance geography played in his life. He never forgot that his east Tennessee frontier roots ran deep and shaped much of his character. An examination of Crockett and his many incarnations, starting with his birth and boyhood, reveals a man who never fully completed his own biographical metamorphoses. He died as a work still very much in progress.
Yet from his first breath, Crockett was a characteristically American product. He squalled into the world on August 17, 1786.1 It was a Thursday, and, true to the old rhyme, he was indeed a Thursday’s child who had far to go, much like the newly conceived nation in which he grew up. The Revolutionary War had been over for only three years, and a growing number of citizens on life’s periphery, especially on the frontier, felt the new American government was mistreating them. Soon after Crockett’s birth, insurgent farmers in western Massachusetts, led by Daniel Shays, revolted against local authorities because of high debt and tax burdens.
What we do know reliably is that Crockett was born in a snug frontier log house on the banks of the Nolichucky River, near its confluence with Limestone Creek.