“Well,” he comments, “if I know’d what he meant by ‘judiciary,’ I wish I may be shot. I never heard there was such a thing in all nature.”
Yet another electioneering story attributed to Crockett, perhaps authentic as many of those told regarding him, shows well enough the rude temper of his region, if we do not go further, and accord to it a certain hint of that native humor that was later to see its growth in America.
“I had taken old Betsy,” says he, referring to his rifle, “and straggled off to the banks of the Mississippi River, and meeting no game, I didn’t like it. I felt mighty wolfish about the head and ears, and thought I’d spile if I wasn’t kivvered in salt, for I hadn’t had a fight in ten days. I cum acrost a fellow who was floatin’ down-stream, settin’ in the stern of his boat, fast asleep. Said I, ‘Hello, stranger, if you don’t take care your boat will get away from you;’ and he looked up and said he, ‘I don’t value you.’ He looked up at me slantendicular, and I looked down at him slantendicular; and he took a chaw of turbaccur, and said he, ‘I don’t value you that much.’ Said I, ‘Come ashore. I can whip you. I’ve been tryin’ to get a fight all the mornin’;’ and the varmint flapped his wings like a chicken. I ris up, shook my mane, and neighed like a horse.
“He run his boat plump head foremost ashore. I stood still and sot my triggers—that is, I took off my shirt, and tied my gallusses tight around my waist—and at it we went. He was a right smart ’coon, but hardly a bait fer a feller like me. I put it to him mighty droll. In ten minutes he yelled enough, and swore I was a ripstaver. Said I, ‘Ain’t I the yaller flower of the forest? I’m all brimstone but the head and ears, and that’s aquafortis.’ Said he, ‘You’re a beauty, and if I know’d yore name I’d vote for you next election.’ Said I, ‘I’m that same Davy Crockett. You know what I am made of. I’ve got the closest shootin’ rifle, the best ’coon dog, the biggest bear tickler and the ruffest rackin’ horse in the district. I can kill more likker, cool out more men, and fool more varmints than any man you can find in all Tennessee!’ Said he, ‘Good morning, stranger, I’m satisfied.’ Said I, ‘Good morning, sir; I feel much better since our meeting—don’t forget about that vote.’”
Congressmen to-day do not employ language quite so picturesque, or methods of vote-getting quite so crude. The story is a trifle apochryphal; yet Crockett himself, in what is called his autobiography, a work which he no doubt dictated, or at least authorized, gives the following account of one of his speeches to a stranger, at Raleigh, while Crockett was en route to Washington to take his first seat in Congress.
“Said he, ‘Hurrah for Adams!’ and said I, ‘Hurrah for hell, and praise your own country!’ And he said, ‘Who are you?’ Said I, ‘I’m that same Davy Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half horse, half alligator, a little touched with snapping turtle, can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride a streak of lightning, slide down a honey locust and not get scratched. I can whip my weight in wildcats, hug a bear too close for comfort, and eat any man opposed to Jackson.’” Which last remark he fain would qualify largely later in his political career! An innate shrewdness that told him how to avoid committing himself was Crockett’s original capital in politics, as it was in life. His native wit, his good fellowship, his rollicking good humor, his courage and strength, his skill with weapons brought him success. He was fitted for success in those surroundings.
Crockett is always chronicled as one of the great American hunters, and this name he deserves. He was a good rifle-shot. In his cane-brake country he hunted the black bear just as it is hunted to-day in the similar country of the Mississippi Delta, by means of dogs, without which the hunter would only by the remotest chance ever get sight of an animal so shy as the black bear.
Abbott, who seems to apologize for Crockett, needs for himself an apologist, for he displays a lamentable ignorance of the environment of which he writes, as well as of many common facts in natural history. As a matter of fact there was no risk whatever in the pursuit of the black bear, even when the hunter was not accompanied by his dogs, whose presence eliminated the last possible danger of the chase. In those days the rifle was a single-shot muzzle-loader, in no wise so effective as the modern hunting arm, but even thus early in the history of American wild game, the black bear had ceased to be a formidable animal, if indeed he ever was such.[[14]]
Abbott, with gross and indeed singular inaccuracy, repeatedly speaks of Crockett as killing the “grizzly bear” and he mentions the “shaggy skins” of these “ferocious animals.” In reality Davy Crockett saw nothing but the flat, smooth hides of the common black bear of the South, one of the most cowardly animals that ever lived. He killed numbers of them, and enjoyed the vociferous chase with his hounds. Sometimes he did not need to use the rifle, but killed the bear with the knife, a feat often repeated by men of the present generation in the cane-brake hunting of the South.
Crockett mentions killing one bear that weighed six hundred and seventeen pounds, and he speaks of another that he thinks weighed six hundred pounds. In one hunt of two weeks he killed fifteen bears. Once he killed three bears in half an hour, and at another time six in one day, with an additional four on the following day. In one week the total was seventeen bears, and in the next hunt he speaks of killing ten of the same animals. He states that he killed fifty-eight bears in the fall and winter of that year, and in one month of the following spring he added forty-seven bears to his score, a total of a hundred and five killed in less than one year. In all he killed several hundred bears, very many deer and countless small game. He was a benefactor to all the poor laboring folk that lived anywhere near him, and speaks of giving one poverty-stricken neighbor a thousand pounds of meat, the product of his rifle during a few hours of one afternoon.[[15]]