American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett (9 page)

The next day, November 4, 1813, Crockett and some of his men returned to the Indian town to see what provisions might be salvageable, for the men were by this time exceedingly hungry and without reinforcements or arriving supplies. Crockett witnessed a macabre scene of dead, bloated, and half-charred bodies strewn across the town. “They looked very awful, for the burning had not entirely consumed them, but given them a very terrible appearance, at least what remained of them.” Buildings creaked and groaned, half-toppled and smoldering, and they found one large house that had a big store of potatoes underneath, in its cellar, and Crockett noted that “hunger compelled us to eat them, though I had a little rather not, if I could have helped it, for the oil of the Indians we had burned up on the day before had run down on them, and they looked like they had been stewed with fat meat.”
²⁴

The stores of found food proved insufficient, and Crockett returned with these men to Fort Strother, where everyone was near starvation. They rested and attempted to recuperate for a few days. Crockett noted that food was so scarce they were forced into “eating beef-hides, and continued to eat every scrap we could lay our hands on.” Men grew weak, sicker than they had already been, and morale fell dangerously low. Then, on November 7, news came from a runner that Fort Talladega, just thirty miles to the southeast, was under siege by a large band of hostile Creeks. The runner, the chief of a friendly band of Creeks ensconced in the fort, had escaped in a hogskin and himself run the thirty miles to take personal audience with General Jackson.
²⁵
Jackson did not delay, ordering his men to march immediately and not stop through the long night.

At sunrise, Crockett and his cohorts arrived near the fort to find “eleven hundred painted warriors, the very choice of the Creek nation.” The hostile Creeks had surrounded the fort, which housed a good number of friendly Creeks, and the hostiles were attempting to coerce the friend-lies to join them in a fight against Jackson and his army, bribing them with the lure of guns, money, fine horses, blankets, and a host of other spoils of war, which were exaggerations given the army’s actual threadbare condition. The military tactic Jackson would employ was the same that had worked at the bloody massacre of Tallusahatchee: surround and encircle the enemy with two connecting lines of men, then tighten the circle and squeeze them into panic.

Crockett and his men, under the direction of Major Russell, moved in on the fort, but they saw no activity; they heard only the voices of friendly Indians hooting and calling out, attempting to warn the soldiers about an ambush. Enemy scouts had signaled the soldiers’ arrival, and thousands of war-ready Creeks lay hunkered down, concealed under the riverbanks of a branch that curved around the fort “in the manner of a half moon.” They waited patiently, some almost fully submerged in the icy water, others lurking stealthily quiet in the woods between the stream and the fort. Finally, nervous friendly Indians, noting that the soldiers were not heeding their warnings, ran out from their positions around the fort to the front of the line. The disturbance halted the march, and not wishing to miss the opportunity, the Creeks hidden beneath the stream opened fire. When some of the soldiers began to retreat, Indians poured from the banks in waves, a thousand or more, and Crockett noticed with some trepidation that “they were all painted scarlet, and were just as naked as they were born.” The Indians fired as they ran, and “came rushing forth like a cloud of Egyptian locusts, and screaming like all the young devils had been turned loose, and the old devil of all at their head.” Some of Russell’s men dismounted and ran on foot to the security of the fort, and horses, cavalry soldiers, and Indians swirled in a chaotic mass of gunfire and screams. Crockett’s company waited until the Indians ran shrieking within close range, then lowered and let fire, killing many and sending them fleeing toward the other line. The Indians were caught in a downpour of deadly crossfire, and the soldiers killed “upwards of four hundred of them.”

In the battle frenzy, the warriors retaliated with guns, bows and arrows, and tomahawks, and a large group managed to create enough sustained pressure to cause a rift in the army’s line. Crockett remembers that they were drafted militia whose line parted, and this gap let a considerable number of Indians escape and begin an effective counterattack, forcing a livid General Andrew Jackson to retreat. Jackson later fumed, “If the line had not given way, [we] would have repeated Tallusahatchee.”
²⁶
In a separate missive to Governor Blount, Jackson reiterated the gravity of his men’s blunder: “Had there been no departure from the original order of battle, not an Indian would have escaped.” The error had cost him a quick ending to the war; the breach allowed nearly 700 Creeks to escape and forced Jackson to retreat and regroup back at Fort Strother. In an official report to General Claiborne, Jackson’s seething rage is clear: “I was compelled by a double cause—the want of supplies and the want of cooperation from the East Tennessee troops, to return to this place.”
²⁷
His situation was most dire: his men were quite literally starving, he’d received no support or provisions, and a large number of his troops, who had been with him since the Natchez expedition clear back in January of 1813, were on expired terms—it was time for them to go home, and mumblings of discord echoed around the camp.

What happened next—a mutiny—has become a matter of controversy, the versions shedding a good deal of light on the character of both David Crockett and Andrew Jackson. In his autobiography, which contains such convincing and accurate firsthand descriptions and observations of the attacks at Tallusahatchee and Talladega that they are considered suitable historical source material, Crockett tells the story of the mutiny and highlights his involvement in it. In Crockett’s version, he and a group of volunteers, half-starved and past their enlistment dates, requested of Jackson that they return home for fresh horses and clothing, and in this way they would be prepared and rejuvenated for another campaign. Crockett notes that “our sixty days had long been out, and that was the time we entered for.” According to Crockett, Jackson denied the men their wish, but in defiance of the general they saddled up and began to depart. “We got ready and moved on till we came near the bridge, where the general’s men were all strong along both sides. . . . But we had our flints ready picked, and our guns ready primed, that if we were fired on we might fight our way through, or all die together.”
²⁸

Crockett relates how they arrived at the bridge and heard the guards cocking their guns, and through fog-thick tension the men marched on past the bridge, Jackson’s guns leveled on them: “But, after all, we marched boldly on, and not a gun was fired, nor a life lost.” As recounted, it was a defiant, dramatic, and defining act of mutiny, but it simply did not happen that way.

In fact, Crockett and his volunteer cohorts had enlisted for ninety days rather than sixty.
²⁹
It’s true that the tattered troops were starving, destitute, and ready for home. On November 17, 1813, Jackson broke his camps and struck toward Fort Deposit, where provisions might be found. About twelve miles from camp they were met by a supply train of “150 beeves and nine wagons of flour,”
³⁰
and the troops halted to devour meat and bread. Jackson, viewing them as sufficiently replenished, then ordered them to march straight back to Fort Strother. But the men were mentally and physically broken, and they could not take the suffering anymore. Some were verbally defiant, barking violent protestations; others merely bowed their heads in silent disdain of their commander. One company, rather than returning toward Fort Strother, turned and continued in the direction of Tennessee.

Jackson immediately mounted a horse and galloped in a long detour ahead of the deserting men. Along the way he met General Coffee and his cavalry (Crockett likely among them). Jackson ordered Coffee to fire on any men who refused orders. He sat tall and angry in the saddle, his eyes blazing with resentment and disgrace; he bellowed that he would shoot to kill any man who did not turn back.

Jackson’s fierceness must have been impressive, for the company, after very little deliberation, did an about-face, and as ordered, headed back.
³¹
But there was even more widespread mutiny afoot at the main encampment, and Jackson returned to find a large brigade readying to leave. His left arm still in a sling from the Benton-Carroll duel injury, Jackson used his good arm to heft up a musket and level it across the neck of his horse. He trotted to the front of the brigade and pointed it at the line of men, raging in near-hysteria that he would kill the first man to move forward. Major Reid and General Coffee eased behind in support.

Disconsolate, but realistic enough to see that Jackson and his supporters were deadly serious, the mutineers turned around and slowly, be-grudgingly, returned to their posts. The fiery, unyielding General Andrew Jackson had nearly single-handedly thwarted the mutiny, and Crockett was probably there to witness it.

Of Crockett’s entire 211-page autobiography, only the mutiny—and two small subsequent skirmishes which he records, but in which he did not participate—are thought to be intentionally falsified for political purposes. Writing in 1833, perhaps eyeing the presidency himself and certainly considering an audience that was politically educated, Crockett by this time had become nearly rabid in his anti-Jackson rhetoric, and he would have his readers see him as scathingly independent, a man not tethered to the command of another; not a party man. In reconstructing the events, Crockett clearly understood the implications of his historical past and his political future. Later, he would express this independence by pointing out that around his neck you would find no collar with MY DOG printed on it, belonging to Andrew Jackson. The fabrication of the mutiny details suggests yet again that Crockett possessed a keen awareness of how he was perceived—freewheeling, an individual and independent thinker, a man who made his own decisions and stuck by them. His “boasts” also show that he was not beyond what he must have considered a small “white lie,” a yarn or tall tale that was very much the domain of the frontier. In his recollection of the mutiny, storyteller Crockett had spun a pretty good one.

In truth, Crockett served out his full enlistment and did not depart until his official expiration on December 24, 1813.
³²
But what he had seen in the command of Andrew Jackson must surely have impressed him: a steadfast resolve, an ability to lead men—with violence and fear tactics if necessary, beyond limits they thought they were capable of themselves, “a hard and determined disciplinarian.”
³³
Crockett would certainly remember the man he’d seen in the fields, a leader whose

very physical appearance announced his character and personality. His face was long and narrow, his frame gaunt, indeed emaciated. But his manner radiated confidence, enormous energy, and steely determination. It bespoke a spirit that willed mastery over his damaged body. His presence signaled immense authority.
³⁴

David Crockett had observed this man and been moved by him. He was even, perhaps, envious of Jackson, of his ability to lead, of the respect and deference he commanded, of the way others acted in his presence. It was an envy that would ultimately fester and turn to vehement hatred, a kind of poison that would come to affect and even drive his decisions in Congress, where he would one day oppose Jackson’s long-developed position on the Indians. But for the moment, Crockett would take his experiences and war-weakened body back home to Bean’s Creek. His first tour of duty was officially up; it was time to head home to Polly and the boys to see how they were keeping.

FIVE

“Mounted Gunman”

C
ROCKETT WOULD BE HOME for less than a year, just long enough to reacquaint himself with his young wife and two boys. He would hunt as much as he could through the cold rigors of winter, then with the spring thaw make a token effort at getting a few plants in that might realize an early harvest, before the war effort called again. Crockett would later claim that he had a hankering for a “small taste of British fighting,” though it is just as likely that the money he had earned on his first enlistment had whetted his mercenary appetite, and the cavalry work had certainly paid better than dirt farming. Plus, it suited his adventurous spirit, his growing notion of what it meant to be a frontiersman. For whatever combination of reasons, and certainly being paid to ride around on horseback and sometimes go hunting was among them, in early autumn—September 28, 1814—Crockett mustered again, this time signing on as one of the Tennessee “Mounted Gunmen.”

During his time at home, Crockett busied himself with farm chores, playing with the boys and perhaps showing them the rudiments of tracking and shooting, and no doubt telling them and Polly stories of his adventures. While Crockett was thus engaged, General Andrew Jackson had minor details like an ongoing revolution, and the subjugation of the entire Creek Nation, on his plate. First he endured near disaster at Emuckfaw Creek, where his resting troops were ambushed and nearly defeated. His rear guard collapsed, retreating shamefully until Jackson himself shored up the line under a volley of heavy fire. He barely managed to re-form his columns and organize them into a counterattack that yielded a decisive victory, though he lost some twenty men and more than seventy-five were wounded. After returning to Fort Strother to rest and regroup, Jackson was joined by the 39th Regiment of the U.S. Infantry and additional volunteers sent by Willie Blount of Tennessee. Jackson’s force had bulged to almost five thousand.
¹
Finally outfitted as needed, General Andrew Jackson would level the blade of his “Sharp Knife”
²
at the Creeks. His plan was deviously simple and yet sinister: he would follow the Coosa River to Horseshoe Bend, where he would annihilate the large encampment of Creeks there and then proceed to the Holy Ground, the confluence of the Tallapoosa and Coosa rivers. Victory here would maim and kill not only physically, but spiritually. The Creeks held the Holy Ground (“Ecunchate”) sacred and protected by the Great Spirit, and “no white man could violate it and live.”
³
Jackson would take pride in proving their savage religion to be mere superstition.
⁴