The illustrations on the preceding page show the two sides of a coin struck in the days of the Bank war, and the legends and designs of this curious token are from the partisan phrases of the enemies of Old Hickory.
For two years Davy remained at the Bean’s Creek home, where a girl baby was added to his family. Then came a turning point in his career—the death of Polly Crockett. At the age of about twenty-seven, the little wife whom Davy had loved, as he says, “almost enough to eat her,” passed into the far unknown. She had fulfilled the duties of the true woman, and brought her children into the world and cared for them while their father fought back the terror of the scalping-knife and tomahawk.
The year 1817 came in as the first in which the armies of the world were not to cut each others’ throats, or do battle to the death. The phantom of Napoleon had risen to confound the pampered sovereigns of the world, and to lead to bloody graves the youth and strength of Europe. Out of the temporary tyranny of the Little Corporal had come the Louisiana Purchase, that was to change the history of our own country. Twenty-eight years of war was past, and Napoleon was now quarrelling with his jailer at St. Helena! At least, the dethroned Emperor could remember with satisfaction his words after he had sold the Louisiana territory to the United States:
“I have given England a rival who, sooner or later, will humble her pride.”
His prophecy was coming true. Endless caravans of prairie schooners were wending their way to the West, and on a single turnpike fifteen thousand wagons paid toll in 1817. In Pittsburg there were less than ten thousand people, and Chicago was yet unknown. Everywhere in the valleys of the great rivers, and out upon the rolling plains from whence their waters came, the log cabin or the sod-house arose as if by magic. A single room, a door with latch and string, and perhaps a window of paper rubbed with oil, were what the settler pictured in his dreams of a future home. The first steamboat upon the Mississippi, at St. Louis, was a harbinger of the new dispensation, the era of steam. The spirit of progress let no man rest, and from each new Indian purchase to the next, the pioneer went on, unsatisfied.
Davy Crockett was now thirty-one, a “rough backwoodsman,” unable to write, but strong and brave. His brother and his wife had come to live with Davy, and to help in caring for his two boys and the baby, but he felt the need of a real home. At last he married the widow of a volunteer killed in the Creek War. Between them they had five children to begin housekeeping with. Davy’s second marriage was a wise step, and he never regretted it. Having thus provided himself with a helpmeet, he was at liberty to indulge the restless strain in his blood by an excursion into Alabama, with three neighbors. Why he did so is not of record, but he had been farming for nearly three years, and evidently wanted a change.
Crossing the Tennessee, the four men went to where Tuscaloosa is now situated. One of the party, named Frazier, was bitten by a copperhead snake in crossing a swamp, and was left at the house of a settler whom he had known before the war. The others made camp and hobbled their horses for the night. The job was not a good one, or some one maliciously cut the ropes, for in the night the bells of the ponies were heard, showing that they were moving about and uneasy. At daylight Davy set out to bring them in, carrying his rifle, which he says was a very heavy one. At every place where he found settlers, he heard that the horses had passed along, but no one had tried to stop them. After going nearly fifty miles, across swamps and streams, through cane-brakes and over mountains, he gave up the chase and stayed that night at the first house he could find. He started to retrace his steps the next morning, but by noon he was too sick to keep on. His rifle was heavier than ever, his head was aching with a fierce pain, and in the midst of the wilderness he lay down, beside the “trace,” to see if rest would help him.
A little after noon several Indians found him, and offered him some ripe melons. He could not eat, and when the Indians signed to him that he would die under such conditions, he fully agreed with them. They told him that there was a house only a mile and a half away, and he tried to reach it. He “reeled like a cow with the blind staggers,” and finally hired one of the Indians to carry his gun for a half a dollar. Reaching the house, Davy was dosed with hot drinks and put to bed. The next day, although he had a high fever and was half delirious, he persisted in going on with two of his Tennessee neighbors who had come along. They were bound to the place where the horses had escaped, and Davy took turns at riding behind the men until the old camp was reached.
His comrades were still there, and as Davy grew worse, they took him to the house of a man named Jesse Jones, and went on with the two men who had brought him back. For two weeks Davy was very ill, most of the time unconscious. Despairing of his recovery, Mrs. Jones gave him a whole bottle of “Bateman’s Drops,” the only medicine she had in the house. He tells us that the result was a profound sweat, which lasted till morning. Then he awoke, and asked for water, nearly frightening the kind woman to death, for she had expected him to die without recovering consciousness. The crisis being over, he slowly recovered, and when able to leave, hired his passage with a wagoner who came along, and who lived twenty miles from Davy’s home on Bean’s Creek.