Following the path of the earlier Argonaut, Boone, John Crockett in 1783 crossed the Alleghanies, but settled in eastern Tennessee, instead of Kentucky. In this wilderness David was born. It was a land without religion, without schools, without civilization. In such an environment the weaker children died. Naked as a little Indian, David Crockett ran about the rude cabin, and lived because he was fit to survive. One of his earliest recollections is that of an incident in which his uncle, Joseph Hawkins, figured. Hawkins accidentally shot one of the neighbors, the ball passing through his body. There was no surgical skill possible, and it was considered the proper thing in the treatment of this wound to pass a silk handkerchief, carried on the end of a ramrod, from one end to the other of the wound. Crockett appears to have seen his father pull a silk handkerchief entirely through the body of this wounded neighbor. It was a strong breed, that of Tennessee a hundred years ago! Of course this settler must move west, and again west. At the fourth move of his life he located on Cove Creek, the boy Davy being now about eight years of age. About this time Crockett’s father lost his grist-mill by fire. Naturally the remedy for this was to move, and he again took up his journey, settling this time on the road between Abingdon and Knowlton, where he opened a rude tavern, patronized mostly by teamsters of the roughest sort,—certainly a hard enough environment for the coming statesman. The earliest description of Crockett represents him to be “a wiry little fellow, athletic, with nerves of steel.” Even in childhood he was given to fierce encounters, yet he was of an open and generous disposition. He grew up practically without care, his father, if truth be told, being a man of somewhat gross and drunken habits. Davy finally, at the mature age of thirteen, forsook the paternal roof and set out in the world for himself. He chanced fortune with drovers, driving cattle to the eastward, and learned to be hostler and general utility man, becoming acquainted with the trail that ran between Abingdon, Witheville and Charlottesville, Orange Court House and other points in Virginia. He worked for a few months as a farm hand in Virginia. He wandered into Baltimore, with wonder noticed the shipping there, and came near becoming a sailor, but was rescued from that fate. Buffeted by fortune from pillar to post, he worked one month for a farmer at a wage of five dollars. He went apprentice to a hatter and worked for eighteen months for nothing, at the end of which time the hatter unfortunately failed in business.