David Crockett : $b scout, small boy, pilgrim, mountaineer, soldier, bear-hunter, and Congressman, defender of the AlamoAllen, Charles Fletcher
History
David Crockett : $b scout, small boy, pilgrim, mountaineer, soldier, bear-hunter, and Congressman, defender of the Alamo
Allen, Charles Fletcher
Crockett, Davy, 1786-1836
After scouting about between the Escambia and the Choctawhatchee,
the regiment divided, a part going to Baton Rouge, where they joined
Jackson on his way to New Orleans. From now on, Davy was looking out
for his stomach, hunting everything alive along the trail. Hawks,
squirrels, small birds, gophers, and even wood-rats, were thrown into
one pile each night by the hunters, and then divided.
One evening Davy came in without fur or feather for the pile; but there
was a sick man in his mess, and Davy intended to feed him, even if he
himself went hungry. He found Captain Cowen, his commander, broiling a
turkey gizzard, and was told that the turkey had been killed by Major
Smiley, and divided among the sick. Davy went straight to Smiley’s
camp-fire, and he, too, was broiling a turkey’s gizzard. Davy told the
Major that it was the first time he had heard of a turkey with two
gizzards, but it ended with the sick man going hungry.
The next morning, Davy and his mess went on ahead, desperate with
hunger. There appears to have been no attempt to preserve military
discipline. For three days they went without food, and were ready to
“lie down and die.” At last they came to a wide prairie, crossed it,
and found a large creek and wooded bottom-lands. Then a squirrel was
seen, and Davy shot him, but the stricken animal managed to get into a
hole in the tree, thirty feet from the ground. Davy climbed the tree,
without a limb to help him, and fished the dead creature out of the
hole. He says that showed how hungry he was. Shortly after he and the
man with him shot two more squirrels, and also started up a flock of
wild turkeys, finally killing two of them. The hunters then raised
a shout, and were soon joined by the rest of their party, when they
cooked the game and ate it, without salt or bread. The next day a
relief corps came back with a small quantity of flour and other food
from Fort Decatur, and some bee-trees were also found, the honey making
some of the men sick.
Reaching Fort Decatur, the company could get no more than one ration of
meat, and no bread. Davy, who never spared himself, crossed the river
and went to Black Warrior’s town, where he tried to buy food. Taking
off his large hat, he offered an Indian a silver dollar if he would
fill it with corn. The Indian had no corn, but he told Davy of another
of the tribe, who had some left. When the latter was asked to sell part
of his precious store, he refused silver.
“You got some bullet?” he asked.
Davy produced ten bullets, for which he got his hatful of corn.
The Indian weighed the matter in his mind, and asked again, “You got
some powder?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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