Hero Tales from History — Davy Crockett, The Hero of the Alamo
DAVY CROCKETT, THE HERO OF THE ALAMO
Most of the great men in the new West a hundred years ago were born poor; but few were ever as poor as little Davy Crockett.
His father seemed to be unable to get along well and was always in debt.
When Davy was still a lad he was hired out for twenty-five cents a day, but he did not receive the pay himself; it was given to his father.
Once a drover to whom Davy’s father owed money hired Davy to help drive cattle from the Crocketts’ log cabin in East Tennessee over the mountains to a place in Virginia, four hundred miles away.
Though Davy had had a poor place to live, it made him homesick to stay away from there long.
He knew what that lonely man meant when he wrote, while a stranger in a foreign land, “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.
” The drover wanted Davy to stay and work for him in another part of the country, but he did not treat the boy very well, thinking that a twelve-year-old lad four hundred miles from home could not help himself.
But that hard-hearted man did not know Davy Crockett.
The boy found a man who was going in a wagon to a place within a hundred miles of his home in Tennessee.
Davy planned to meet this man very early one morning, about seven miles from where he worked.
The lad did not sleep much that night, and at four o’clock next morning he was on his way to keep his word, though he had to wade seven miles through the deep snow in a blinding blizzard.
He met the man with the wagon and was soon happy in being headed for home.
The roads were rough and the heavy cart jolted over logs and stumps.
The boy could not stand it, not because it was rough, but because they went so slowly.
He soon got off to walk the two or three hundred miles that remained.
But after he had hurried on foot a hundred miles or so, he saw, to his great joy, a drover whom he recognized, for the man had stopped at his father’s log tavern in Tennessee.
The drover took him about a hundred miles on his way, but turned off before reaching the place where Davy lived.
The boy had to walk on quite a distance farther, swimming rivers and wading swamps.
He did not mind that, for his heart was light--he was going home!
He had a happy time telling the family--Davy had seven brothers and sisters--all about his strange journey over the mountains and back.
[Illustration: DAVID CROCKETT, HERO OF THE ALAMO.
_From the painting by A. L.
de Rose_] The boy was soon hired to pay another of his father’s debts.
When Davy expected to be paid in money, the man gave him a note instead.
But Davy was glad to be able to help in this way.
Another time he went and hired out on purpose to pay a bill his father owed.
As his wages were small, it took a long time to pay a few dollars.
When Davy was thirteen he could not read nor write.
At that time he was working for a good Quaker neighbor.
The boy asked permission to work two days a week, just to pay his board, and spend the other days in school.
Young Crockett learned “the three R’s--Readin’, ’Ritin’, ’Rithmetic”--well enough to do the simple business of pioneer life.
Davy’s highest ambition was to own a horse and a gun.
When he had a rifle and a pony he thought he was old enough to marry a girl of seventeen.
He seems not to have thought much about having a home of his own.
The boy bridegroom took possession of a deserted log cabin.
The bride’s father gave them a cow, and the good Quaker lent the young couple fifteen dollars to start housekeeping.
Davy Crockett wrote, after they had bought many fine things with that fifteen dollars, “We were then fixed up pretty grand, so we thought.
” After three years the young Crocketts owned, besides the horse and gun, two cows, two calves, two colts and two children.
But now that he had a home of his own, the young hunter was too restless to stay in it.
When that region became so thickly settled that neighbors lived within a mile or two of one another, the nervous young pioneer moved hundreds of miles, to a newer country where he could find “elbow room.
” His devoted wife took their little children and went with him to the rougher region among Indians, bears, and other wild animals.
Davy Crockett found friends wherever he went.
He was happy-hearted and full of funny stories.
He had a humorous way of saying things that pleased those rough-and-ready western people.
His homely yarns had a meaning deeper than the surface, like those told twenty years later by a young man named Abe Lincoln.
Crockett’s backwoods stories and western slang were quoted all over the country.
He told of “treeing a coon” once, and of how, as he was about to shoot, the raccoon exclaimed, “Don’t shoot, I’ll come right down.
I know I’m a gone coon!
” “I’ll come right down” and “I’m a gone coon” became popular expressions everywhere.
Crockett became a great hunter.
He killed all the bears in the country around him and had exciting times hunting big game wherever he lived.
He was wise and sensible in helping and advising his neighbors.
The people in that pioneer country elected David Crockett a justice of the peace.
They did not care whether he knew much about common law so long as he was possessed of common sense.
When the Creeks and other Indians in the southern states went on the warpath and murdered hundreds of people, General Jackson, the great man of Tennessee, led thousands of white men to kill all the Indians known to have taken part in that massacre, just as he would have tried to rid the country of dangerous bears or snakes.
When Davy Crockett got the word he told his patient little wife, “I’m going to help fight the Indians.
” “Oh, Davy,” she exclaimed, “what will become of us--hundreds of miles from all my friends?
The Indians will come and kill us while you are away.
” But Davy Crockett could not stay.
“I’ve got to go,” he said.
“My country needs me, and if we don’t fight and kill the Indians they will come and kill us all, that’s sure.
” Even when fighting in General Jackson’s army, Davy Crockett was “a law unto himself.
” The officers decided to let him do as he liked, for he seemed to wish to do the right thing by them all.
He would be missing for hours, and then come back with some game, big or little, to feast the company.
Food was very scarce on the long march.
When they got to fighting the Indians, Crockett knew exactly what to do.
His aim was as sure then as it was when hunting bear or deer.
Many a time when a big brave had his tomahawk raised to kill a fallen white man, the savage suddenly dropped dead where he stood.
The astonished soldier would rise, look around, and mutter, “Davy Crockett must be somewhere around.
” Davy’s bear-hunting, sharpshooting, and Indian fighting were so remarkable that his life was a strong proof of the saying, “Truth is stranger than fiction.
” After General Jackson had put all the hostile savages out of the way and made it safe to live in those western states, the people were so grateful to Davy Crockett for his part in it that they put him up for election to Congress.
Rival candidates, who felt much more fitted to go to Washington, made all manner of fun of Davy Crockett, and said the people ought to be ashamed to send a man like that to represent them in Congress.
But the people said, “Davy Crockett ain’t much on book-l’arnin’ an’ spoutin’ poetry, but neither are we.
He knows our life and just what we want.
He ain’t much of a lawyer, but he’s got good sense, an’ he can represent us better’n a dozen lawyers.
” Those people knew what they were doing.
Though Davy Crockett did not know much about books, he was not ignorant, for he was well-educated in the real life of that western frontier.
So the people elected him three times to Congress, and he came to be loved and admired there for his homely wisdom and his quaint way of making others understand just what he meant.
While he was a member of Congress he traveled up and down the eastern states.
Wherever he went he was cheered and feasted.
In Philadelphia, the home of American independence, the people presented him with a beautiful rifle and a hunting-knife and tomahawk of razor steel.
He told the people he would love and cherish that rifle as he would a daughter.
Then and there he named the gun “Betsy.
” While he was away in Congress and the east, Crockett’s enemies worked against him, and he was defeated in the fourth election.
The boyish longing for home came over him then, and he wrote: “In a short time I set out for my own home; yes, my own home, my own soil, and my own humble dwelling; my own family, my own hearts, my own ocean of love and affection which nothing else nor time can dry up.
Here, like the wearied bird, let me settle down for a while and shut out the world.
” Yet, much as Davy Crockett loved his home, he loved his country more.
With this spirit he had also such reckless love of adventure that he could not bear to live at ease when his country needed him.
The American settlers were having terrible times down in Texas.
Thousands of Americans in that country were struggling with the Mexicans, to decide who should control and own the Texas territory.
General Santa Anna, the President of Mexico, had sent thousands of soldiers into that region, captured a brave little army of Americans, and, when these had been disarmed, coolly shot them down as if they had been cattle in a slaughter-house.
All these things were more than Davy Crockett’s flesh and blood could bear.
In his opinion “such cattle as those Mexicans” should be treated like bears or murderous Indians.
Armed with “Betsy,” his new rifle, “to use if need be for his country’s glory,” he was ready to leave for Texas.
He was now fifty-four years old, but his heart was young.
When his friends tried to convince him that the trouble in Texas was no affair of his, Crockett replied that the news from those struggling heroes down there wrung his heart.
“Sorrow will make even an oyster feel poetical,” and Davy left behind him a farewell poem, of which this is a small part: “The home I forsake where my offspring arose;
The graves I forsake where my children repose;
The home I redeemed from the savage and wild;
The home I have loved as a father his child;
The corn that I planted, the fields that I cleared, The flocks that I raised, and the cabin I reared;
The wife of my bosom--Farewell to ye all!
In the land of the stranger I rise or I fall.
” When Davy Crockett arrived at San Antonio, Colonel Travis, the commander of the Americans, had turned an old Spanish mission called the Alamo into a fort.
Santa Anna was near at hand with a large army to capture the one hundred and eighty men who were waiting in the Alamo.
It would have made the hearts of that brave garrison glad if they could have looked into the future far enough to see that General Sam Houston would soon come there and drive the Mexicans out of the country; and that with the war-cry, “Remember the Alamo!
” American soldiers would free Texas from Mexico’s cruel rule, and finally add the vast territory of Texas, New Mexico, and California to the United States.
But they only knew that Santa Anna was near with five thousand Mexican soldiers and that there was no hope of relief.
When Santa Anna and his army had arrived and surrounded the flimsy Spanish convent-fort, he called on Colonel Travis to surrender.
The American answer was a cannon-shot.
Then the Mexicans raised a red flag as a signal that “no quarter” would be given; that is, that no American could expect anything but death at their hands.
Then the battle began.
The walls of the Alamo were not strong, for the convent was not built for a fort.
Yet it took that great Mexican army eleven days to capture it.
Among the Americans were thirteen backwoods hunters like David Crockett and Colonel James Bowie, the inventor of the famous Bowie knife then much used in frontier fighting.
Bowie was ill, but he fought like a hero, as did each of the others, to sell his life as dearly as possible.
On the last day Colonel Travis offered to let the few men who were left go out with a white flag and ask the Mexicans to spare their lives, but not a man would go.
At last the walls of their frail fortress were battered down and four thousand Mexicans came rushing in.
They found Crockett with only five men left--their backs to the wall fighting to the bitter end.
It is said that Crockett was the last to fall.
When beset by too many Mexicans to reload and fire “Betsy,” he took his gun by the barrel and clubbed several Mexicans to death before they shot him down.
The Alamo fell on the 6th of March, 1836. When they found the journal Davy Crockett had kept during the fight, they read his last words in it, written late the night before: “March 5. Pop, pop, pop!
Bom, bom, bom!
--throughout the day.
No time for memorandums now.
Go ahead!
Liberty and independence forever!
” FAMOUS INVENTORS
