American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett (12 page)

The realities of frontier living, however, did not offer the luxury of moping about feeling sorry for oneself for very long. Crockett was immediately faced with a daunting fact: he was left alone with two young boys and a tiny infant daughter, and he was rather ill-prepared to care for them. The boys, at about eight and six respectively, would have been somewhat accustomed to chores and light farm work, but they were used to having a mother around, and her absence was immediately felt. The situation was bleak, as Crockett needed to try to keep the farm functioning, while hunting for food would keep him away for extended periods. It was an onerous time for the widower.

Under the circumstances, Crockett could easily have buckled, pawning his children off on relatives, but to his credit he sought other alternatives. He loved his boys, and the tiny babe Polly would certainly have reminded him of his wife. Crockett vowed to keep the family together, come what may. “I couldn’t bear the thought of scattering my children,” he confessed. One solution dawned on him, and he set about convincing his brother and his wife and children to move in and help around the place. They kindly consented, but Crockett admitted that it wasn’t ideal. “They took as good care of my children as they could, but yet it wasn’t all like the care of a mother. And though their company was to me in every respect like that of a brother and sister, yet it fell far short of being like that of a wife.”

Though throughout his narrative he is often philosophical and even poetic, Crockett was primarily a man of action, of deeds over ideas. As a young man he had “set out to hunt” a wife when he determined that he needed one, and now again he looked forward to what he must, of necessity, do. The motto to which he ultimately yoked himself (and which adorns the title page of his narrative) exclaims: “Be always sure you’re right, THEN GO AHEAD!” This was not the credo of a man who made hasty or irrational decisions, but rather reflected a man of steadfast optimism. One needed to assess a situation quickly, weigh the alternatives, make a decision, and then act on it—one needed to “go ahead” rather than retreat. There was no time to linger in the past, not when the often bitter realities of the present—hungry young mouths to feed, a farm gone to seed, debts piling up higher than the corn rows—pressed down all around you. So it was that Crockett confronted his current state of affairs and levied his decision: “I came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t do, but that I must have another wife.”

While Crockett’s first courtships were fraught with young love, acceptance, rejection, and all manner of drama, his second round could hardly even be called courting. It was more of a business venture, a contractual arrangement based on mutual needs. Nearby lived a woman recently widowed, whose husband had been slain in the attack at Fort Mims.
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She had a son and daughter of her own, about the same age as Crockett’s children, and one can almost see him rubbing his chin as the notion hit him: “I began to think, that as we were both in the same situation, it might be that we could do something for each other.” The woman he was considering was one Elizabeth Patton, an intelligent and resourceful daughter of a prominent North Carolina farmer and planter named Robert Patton who had served in the Revolutionary War. Her good breeding showed in her manners, her managerial skills, and the tidy state of her own small farm, which appeared organized and well-tended compared to Crockett’s own grounds, unkempt because of frequent, and extended, absences. She was also rumored to possess some “grit” of her own, a sum amounting to about $800, an eye-opening and fortunate windfall certainly not lost on the perpetually impoverished David Crockett.
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He therefore began to find reasons for visits, and as she lived nearby, this was quite convenient. He would happen by her “snug little farm” and soon began to formally pay his respects to her. She would certainly have surmised what he was up to—and appears to have enjoyed his blunt entreaties—despite his feigned subtlety: “I was as sly about it as a fox when he is going to rob a hen-roost.”

For her part, Elizabeth Patton must have seen that there might be some utility in having Crockett around, even if he hunted and spent as much time out adventuring as rumor held. There was a certain charm to the man, to be sure. At nearly thirty, and having spent the better part of his lifetime outside, Crockett had filled out into a stout, robust man of nearly six feet, with ruddy red cheeks, a swoop of thick cedar-brown hair, and piercing but playful aquamarine eyes. He possessed a beakish nose and a strong chin, set hard and determined.
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And there were his engaging storytelling and infectious sense of humor, which made him rather irresistible. Crockett modestly recalled that his company “wasn’t at all disagreeable to her.” Ultimately, it was a match born of hardship and circumstance. “We soon bargained,” Crockett said of the union, “and got married, and then went ahead.” It was the summer of 1816.

The marriage itself, a low-key event devoid of the traditional rituals like flask-filling attendant to either of their first marriages, was presided over by Pastor Richard Calloway and took place in Elizabeth’s parents’ home in Franklin County.
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A smallish knot of family and friends huddled quietly in the living room, where an air of seriousness and dignity prevailed. Crockett and the attendants stood still and expectant, nervously awaiting the arrival through the front doorway of the bride. Without warning, curious grunts and squeals of a pig came from outside, and almost as if herded by devious pranksters, the porker crashed the wedding party, snorting right down the aisle, its hooves skidding and sliding on the hard floor. Children joined the pig’s squeals with peals of their own laughter, and adults, previously caught up in the seriousness of the wedding, snickered. Crockett, as he often did, masterfully seized the awkward moment and made it his own. He put on a stern visage, stormed toward the pig and, grabbing it by the scruff of its neck, shepherded the unruly animal out the front door with an emphatic boot. “Old hook,” he exclaimed as he clapped his hands clean, “from now on,
I’ll
do the grunting around here!”
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In the stalwart, steady, and managerial-minded Elizabeth, Crockett had found a reliable business partner, a dependable surrogate mother for his own children, and a companion, if not a soul-mate. Yet they would hardly bask in honeymoon bliss for long. In less than a year Crockett determined, as he often did when he got the itch, that the time was nigh for some exploring of new, more fertile and promising country. His farm on the Rattlesnake Branch was small and in perpetual disrepair, what would today be considered a “tear down.” Elizabeth held more acreage, a free and clear title, and combining those two, plus her substantial dowry, had potential. They might get a place big enough, with more tillable ground, to eradicate his debts and begin to see consistent profit. But it would take the right plot of ground, and that quest gave the newlywed David Crockett the perfect excuse to explore new country again. The wanderlust was in him, and perhaps feeling somewhat solvent with the staid Elizabeth taking care of things, he rallied a few of his neighbors for a reconnaissance outing. His traveling companions, named “Robinson, Frazier, and Rich,” joined him as they rode toward Alabama, heading through the Jones Valley on overgrown military wagon roads cut during the campaign Crockett had participated in, passing through the very places, like Black Warrior Town, that he had helped to burn to the ground under John Coffee. The trip, begun in hopeful search of better ground and greener pastures, started ominously and declined.

After only a day of travel, they stopped just across the Tennessee River at the home of one of Crockett’s “old acquaintances, who’d settled there after the war.” While they rested, Frazier, who Crockett referred to as “a great hunter” (quite a compliment coming from him), headed afield to hunt, but soon returned looking pale and feverish, having suffered a poisonous snake bite. Frazier was left to convalesce while Crockett, Robinson, and Rich rode on through the Jones Valley.

The expedition camped, hobbling their horses along the banks of the Black Warrior River, along a route Crockett would have found eerily familiar, having traveled it to and from Fort Mims. The horses had been tethered carelessly, for in the twilight hours before daybreak Crockett heard the team’s bells “going back the way we had come, for they had started to leave us.” Crockett waited until daylight so that he could better track the rogue equine, and volunteered to head off alone, on foot, carrying only his heavy rifle. Crockett tracked hard all day, busting through cane and thicket, wading deep swamps and creeks swirling with biting insects, flies, and swarms of mosquitoes. Crockett pushed on and on, following the ever-fainter tinkling of the horses’ bells, and confirming at each house he passed that indeed, a small group of horses had recently passed that way. Eventually Crockett couldn’t hear the animals anymore and lost their tracks, so he was forced to abandon his pursuit and determined to return to the last house he had passed, where he might rest and sup. The family there took Crockett in, and calculated that Crockett had covered nearly fifty miles on foot that day. When he awoke the next morning Crockett was deeply sore, his legs so fatigued that he feared he would not be able to walk. Still, he felt compelled to rejoin his party and apprise them of the horse dilemma, so he limped away from the safety and comfort of the house and wandered very slowly from early morning to noon, feeling progressively worse, a cold damp sweat overtaking him, his head beginning to throb and pound, his stomach and legs wambling. Finally his long rifle grew so heavy in his arms, and he had grown so feeble, that he could no longer continue, so he decided to “lay down by the side of the trace, and in a perfect wilderness, too,” to see if he might improve with some rest.

Later, like a mirage or hallucination, the image of “some Indians” hovered over him; Crockett must have wondered if they were from a dream or a nightmare as they loomed above him. The friendly Creeks offered him some ripe melons, but Crockett felt so sickly he merely shook his head without saying a word. He had spent enough time with Indians to communicate with them, and he quickly learned through their sign language something that he had half-suspected anyway: “They then signed to me, that I would die, and be buried; a thing I was confoundedly afraid of myself.” Through more sign language Crockett learned that it was about a mile and a half to the nearest house, and so he got up with their assistance and attempted to walk of his own power. “I got up to go, but when I rose, I reeled like a cow with the blind staggers, or a fellow who had taken too many ‘horns.’ ” One of the Indians proposed to lead Crockett there and carry his gun, an offer he accepted, gratefully throwing a half-dollar into the bargain. By the time they got to the house Crockett was out of his senses with fever. The woman of the house put him in bed and gave him warm teas, but he failed to improve much over the next two days. Though Crockett would not have known it, his condition was malaria, undoubtedly the result of mosquito bites he had received while walking through the bogs and swamps after his horses.

The next day some neighbors from Crockett’s home happened by—they were also out scouting new territory. They agreed to alternate horses and give Crockett a ride back up to the Black Warrior River to inform Robinson and Rich of his condition and their situation. Crockett hoped he would get better, but little did he know that his malaria was simply making the transition from the cold and hot stages to the sweating stage. As they rode, shifting him awkwardly from one horse to another, Crockett’s condition worsened; by the time they reached Robinson and Rich he slumped listlessly, no longer able to even sit the horse. Crockett did have the mental capacity to make this understated observation: “I thought now the jig was mighty nigh up with me.” He was carried to the nearest house, owned by Jesse Jones; here Robinson and Rich managed to buy horses, and left Crockett for dead.

Crockett quickly fell into cerebral malaria, flopping about in violent fits, sweating, suffering psychosis, and finally settling into a comalike state for nearly two weeks. When he came to, Crockett learned that he had been speechless for five full days, but had revived without the help of a doctor, for none was near. He later joked that at the time, “They had no thought that I would ever speak again,—in Congress or anywhere else.” Thinking he was likely to die anyway, the woman took a chance and poured an entire bottle of Bateman’s Drops (a frontier medicine containing alcohol and possibly quinine, which would have helped with the malaria)
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down his throat, and he broke into a deeper sweat all night but then revived, and politely requested a drink of water. From that moment he was on the mend, until finally, after a great deal of effort, he was able to walk on his own. In time a passing wagoner agreed to haul Crockett in the direction of his home, and when they reached the wagoner’s destination, he rented Crockett one of his horses so he could continue the twenty miles home.

Elizabeth Crockett had lost one husband to the Creek War, and she would have been prepared for the news that David had met his end during the expedition. Such news was an unfortunate reality on the edge of wilderness. Word had come to her through Robinson and Rich that Crockett had perished. But Elizabeth Patton Crockett was thorough, detail oriented, and she wanted proof—she wanted to know about his personal effects and money, so she hired a man to head out and discover what he could. Somehow this man and Crockett missed each other on the trail, and Crockett arrived home before the man could return with the news. Elizabeth would have been shocked when she opened her door to find the emaciated and ghostly Crockett standing there, no doubt forcing a bemused grin. Crockett remembered the moment clearly: “I was so pale, and so much reduced, that my face looked like it had been half soled with brown paper.” After Elizabeth recovered from her astonishment, she informed Crockett that his traveling companions had returned his horse (they’d lucked upon all the horses on the way home) and carried with them the story that not only was he dead, but that they had witnessed Crockett take his final breath and spoken with the men who had performed the burial.
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Prefiguring Mark Twain’s famous line “the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” Crockett fashioned his own humorous understatement regarding his reported death when he said flatly, “I know’d that was a whapper of a lie as soon as I heard it!”