Carroll received forty-two thousand votes, while his austere and wealthy rival had but eleven thousand. On the same popular tidal wave, Davy Crockett was carried to Nashville as a representative of his neighbors in the recent Purchase from the Indians, and in the atmosphere that prevailed in the halls of state he believed he had found his place.
Davy had hardly been sworn in as a member of the Legislature when bad news from home reached him. A freshet had swept away his mill, and his distillery was worthless without the corn that was ground by it. When he had served through the session, he rode home, sold all that he had, and paid every dollar he could realize to his creditors. He was left with nothing but his household “plunder,” as he termed it, and the times were hard. The “Loan Bank” scheme that was to provide a currency and credit for development of the State had become a failure. There was nothing to do, in such times, but to live by the sweat of the brow. His wife stood bravely by him, and he gave up all he had, and “took a bran-fire new start.”
He was now thirty-six, and his oldest boy was sixteen. With this son and a young man named Abram Henry, Davy started in the spring of 1822 to look at the Obion River region, then reputed to be full of game. It was a long tramp across an unsettled country, nearly one hundred and fifty miles in a bee-line, and the three led a single horse which carried their scanty outfit of food, blankets, and ammunition. There were many streams to cross, including the Tennessee. In what is now Carroll County they struck the head of the south fork of the Obion River, and this they followed to a place about ten miles south of where the small settlement named after Crockett now is situated. Here they found themselves in a wilderness, abounding with game. The three nearest cabins were seven, fifteen, and twenty miles distant. The one seven miles away was that of the Owens family, and it was on the other side of the Rutherford Fork of the Obion, a tortuous stream, then in flood and over its low banks for half a mile on either shore. The water was chilly, the depth uncertain, and the crossing difficult and full of danger.
There was nothing to do but to take to the water, and after hobbling the horse, so that he could graze till they returned for him, they went at it “like so many beavers.” When the water was too deep to go ahead, Davy felt the way over the shallower bottom by using a pole. His boy often had to swim beside them, and progress was slow. When the river channel was reached, they found that a tree had fallen and lodged in a pile of flood-trash near the middle of the main stream. The water was deep at this place, and there was no way of crossing without some kind of a bridge. A large buttonwood tree stood upon the near side of the river, and the two men began cutting it down with Davy’s tomahawk. They managed to do this so that it fell above the flood-trash, and when it had been washed against it the bridge was ready.
“When we got over this,” says Davy, “it was still a sea of water as far as the eye could reach. We took into it again, and went ahead for about a mile, hardly ever seeing a single spot of land, and sometimes it was very deep. When at last we came in sight of land, and got out, it was but a little way before we saw the house, which was more pleasing even than the sight of land. I felt mighty sorry when I would look at my boy, and see him shaking like he had the worst kind of an ague, for there was no time for fever then. As we got near the house, we saw Mr. Owens and several men that were with him, just starting away. They saw us, and stopped, but looked much astonished until we got up to them, and I made myself known. The men who were with him were the owners of a boat which was the first that ever went that far up the Obion River, and some hands they had hired to carry it about a hundred miles further up, by water, though it was only about thirty, by land, as the river is very crooked.”
The whole party then went back to the Owens cabin, where Mrs. Owens won Davy’s gratitude by taking charge of the shivering boy. A great fire blazed in the fireplace, and before that they dried themselves. After supper, leaving his boy with Mrs. Owens, Davy and the others went on board of the boat, and stayed all night. It was a flat-bottomed boat, drawing but a foot or so of water. The cabin, or deck-house, was of light material, furnished with bunks, and stored with the freight that would be injured by rains. The other freight was lashed on deck, and the load was all that was safe to carry. This boat was carrying flour, sugar, castings, coffee, salt, and other goods needed on the frontier, and was to go as far as McLemore’s Bluff. This was in Carroll County (as now named), and the crew were to be paid five hundred dollars bonus if they landed the freight at that point. It was to be a proof that the river was navigable thus far, though it seems that a flood was first necessary.
In the morning Davy went with the boat, to help get it by a place on the river where a “harricane” had blown trees across it, making it hard to get through. They found that the water had gone down, and had to wait for a rain. The next day it rained “rip-roariously,” as Davy tells us, but yet not enough. While waiting, Davy and the boatmen crossed the Fork, and in a short time “slapped up a cabin” on a spot selected by him. Here Davy procured four barrels of meal, one of salt, and ten gallons of spirits, in payment for which he was to help get the boat to McLemore’s Bluff. Henry and the boy were left in the new cabin, after a deer had been killed for them, and other supplies provided.
The day after the cabin was built, Davy started out with his rifle for a hunt. Within a few minutes he had killed a fine buck, and hung him up. He started to go back to the boat for help in bringing him in, but on the way he struck the trail of a number of elk and went after them. In a short time he saw two deer, large bucks with immense antlers. He dropped one, and then shot the other, which would not leave the one first killed. Hanging the two out of reach of bears and wolves, Davy kept after the elk till evening, when he gave up the chase, being four miles from the cabin, and “as hungry as a wolf.”
As he set out for the river, on his way back, he killed two more bucks. Dressing these in the usual way, with the skins on, he hung them up and kept on. Before he got to the river, just at sundown, he killed another buck, making six since morning. At last he reached the lower edge of the “harricane,” and was disappointed at not finding the boat there. He had not expected it could be taken through that day. When he fired his rifle as a signal, the answer came from up the river. He then knew that he had to crawl and climb through the “harricane,” in which all kinds of berry-bushes and vines were growing. A fat coon would have had a hard time in getting through after him, he tells us. Finally he got to a place where a skiff came for him. He says that he felt as if he needed sewing up all over, thanks to the brambles and the briers along his trail, and he was so tired that he could scarcely work his jaws to eat.
The next morning four of the deer were secured and taken on board, and the voyage proceeded. Pushing, and hauling with ropes, it took eleven days to reach the Bluff, from which point Davy and a young man named Flavius Harris went back to his cabin in the skiff, given to them by the boatmen. They at once cleared a field, in the usual rough way, leaving the charred stumps standing, and planting among them. Davy put in enough corn to do for the winter, but had no time for fencing. It was late spring, and he was anxious to return for his family. While thus planting and planning, Davy killed ten bears and “a great abundance of deer,” repaying the Owens family many times over for their kindness to him and his boy. In these weeks of hard work the only white faces seen were those of the Owenses, and once in a while those of men looking over the country.