IN 1776—THE YEAR AMERICA declared its independence and the war against Great Britain produced a growing cohesion among the former colonies—the determined Crockett tribe, including John; his bride, Elizabeth; and led by David the elder—packed up its belongings and made its way over the formidable Appalachian barrier into what eventually became the northeastern tip of Tennessee.1
Like the waves of other settlers, land speculators, and squatters pouring into this territory, the Crocketts knowingly defied a royal decree that closed off the western frontier to colonial expansion. King George III had issued his Royal Proclamation of 1763 following Britain’s acquisition of French territory in North America at the end of the French and Indian War.2 This measure was intended to stabilize relations of various Indian tribes by making all lands west of the heads of rivers flowing into the Atlantic Ocean from the west or northwest off-limits to any white settlement. Instead of abiding by the proclamation—once described as “a triumph of naïveté, geographical ignorance, and wishful thinking”—restless colonists, eager to increase their holdings and gain new ground, simply ignored it.3 They were angered by the ban on expansion and followed the trails blazed before them by the Longhunters and other Overmountain Men, mostly Scots-Irish settlers who had come west over the Appalachians, or the Allegheny Mountains, as they were then called.
Longhunters—so named because of the duration of their wilderness hunts—came from Pennsylvania and the Carolinas, but most started in the Holston River Valley of Virginia or the adjacent valley of the Clinch River. They were the first American frontiersmen to go beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains, making their living as hunters, trappers, and scouts for land surveyors. Throughout the 1760s and 1770s, Longhunters provided invaluable information for the settlers streaming into the future states of Tennessee and Kentucky.4 Although they often adopted the Indian way of life, including some of the dress, most Longhunters considered Indians as competition and, defying the government and more liberal East Coast sentiment, were known to shoot them on sight. They also poached game on Indian lands, disregarded treaties, and randomly broke laws.
A particularly well known Longhunter was Daniel Boone, who explored the upper Holston River valley for a land speculator, later playing a key role in the early settlement of Tennessee. One of Boone’s camps on Boon’s Creek, a tributary of the Watauga River, become the home of his friend and hunting companion Captain William Bean, Tennessee’s first known permanent white settler, who built his log cabin at the site in 1769.5 That same year, Robert Crockett, a rugged Longhunter and kinsman of David Crockett the elder, was ambushed and killed by Indians near his camp on the headwaters of Roaring River on the old war trail leading from Cherokee territory to Shawnee land.6 It was an act that would be deeply ingrained in the consciousness of the Crockett clan.
An ethnic mélange of settlers followed the Great Wagon Road and the well-trodden routes of the Longhunters, including English, Welsh, Irish, German, Swiss, French Huguenot, and some African slaves. Most of the newcomers, however, were Scots-Irish, such as the Crocketts. Reflecting early class division in the fledgling Republic, all of them had long detested the autocratic power of the British king and resented what they considered a conspiracy to take away their God-given freedom.
“If abused, they fight; if their rights are infringed they rebel; if forced, they strike; and if their liberties are threatened, they murder,” wrote Tennessee historian John Trotwood Moore. “They eat meat and always their bread is hot.”7 It was frequently said that the Scots-Irish in Tennessee feared only God himself. And yet another adage about these early pioneers suggested that they kept the Sabbath, as well as anything else they could get their hands on. For the Crocketts, that meant getting their hands on the new lands that waited over the mountains.
The principal communities that were being established in the region of what became east Tennessee were on the North Holston, Watauga, and Nolichucky rivers, and in Carter’s Valley, a settlement named for merchant John Carter. In fact, the Crockett family chose Carter’s Valley as their new home.8 They found thick forests and distant mountains—the oldest east of the Mississippi—sitting “like dethroned kings,” as poet Sidney Lanier put it. The Crocketts and other settlers built one-room log cabins with dirt floors and mud and stick fireplaces close to the swift-flowing streams threading from the highlands. They found hidden springs, cleared land for planting, and, working together, carved settlements out of the land with their own hands.
David Crockett, his sons, and the other newly arrived white settlers believed they had moved to within the boundary of the Virginia Colony, but a survey revealed that almost all of the settlements were south of North Carolina’s western claims in land that had been guaranteed to the Cherokee Nation. In 1772, when ordered to disband and relocate to north of the boundary, the settlers, who were living beyond the bounds of any organized government, formed an alliance they called the Watauga Association, with John Carter being made one of the commissioners. At the same time, the audacious Wataugans, as they called themselves, schemed to get around the sanctions for purchasing land imposed on them by the British.9 In 1775, they dispatched a delegation, loaded down with gifts and trade goods, to a parley with the Cherokee leader Attakullakulla to see about leasing Indian land. Despite pleas from the aging Indian leader’s son, Dragging Canoe, who eloquently but forcefully protested that tribal land was melting away “like balls of snow in the sun,” a deal was struck that eventually led to whites purchasing Cherokee land. “You have bought a fair land, but there is a cloud hanging over it,” Dragging Canoe told the Wataugans. “You will find its settlement dark and bloody.”10Dragging Canoe’s prediction would prove true, and eventually there would be serious repercussions for the white settlers, including the Crocketts.
The estimated two thousand white émigrés soon transformed much of the Cherokee land by clearing forests and planting crops and orchards. More log cabins popped up across the landscape, and, despite bringing in livestock that encroached upon much of the grasses and tall cane along the streams, the white families killed great numbers of deer, bear, and other game. It became clear to the Cherokees that, unlike the Longhunters, who came and went, this new wave of whites were going to remain. The Cherokees had never expected such a great number of newcomers, and many tribal elders who had never agreed to the transactions in the first place were deeply troubled by what they witnessed. Serious dissension developed within the tribe, and the more militant Cherokees grew emboldened and understandably formed an alliance with the British during the American Revolution.
After several skirmishes with the Cherokees, the settlers sought outside assistance to stem further hostilities. On July 5, 1776, the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, David Crockett and his eldest son, William, were two of the more than one hundred thirteen Wataugans who signed (or, as two men did, made their mark on) a petition asking North Carolina to annex their land and provide protection from the British and Cherokee warriors. Because North Carolina and Virginia had not agreed on boundary lines, similar petitions were sent to the Virginia government in 1776 and 1777 from Carter’s Valley—including the signatures of David the elder and those of David Jr., William, and John Crockett.11 The Watauga Association continued until 1778 and was finally annexed to North Carolina. By then it was too late for David the elder and some members of his family who had built a split-log cabin and established growing fields. In his Narrative of 1834, Crockett recounted his father’s early life in east Tennessee when he wrote: “He settled there under dangerous circumstances, both to himself and his family, as the country was full of Indians, who were at that time very troublesome.”12
Those “troublesome” times struck the family with a fury in the spring of 1777. John Crockett was away, on duty as a frontier ranger, one of the volunteers who were authorized bounties of land in return for combating hostile Indian raiding parties.13 During much of 1776 and 1777, John’s elder brother Robert also was gone, serving with the militia as a draftsman and helping build fortifications on the North Carolina frontier. While these Crockett men were off protecting other settlers, a party of Creek Indians and renegade Cherokees, known as Chickamaugas, emerged from the forest and descended on the homestead of David and Elizabeth Crockett. “By the Creeks, my grandfather and grandmother Crockett were both murdered, in their own house, and on the very spot where Rogersville, in Hawkins county, now stands. At the same time, the Indians wounded Joseph Crockett, a brother to my father, by a ball which broke his arm; and took James a prisoner, who was still a younger brother than Joseph, and who, from natural defects was less able to make his escape, as he was both deaf and dumb.”14
If a son named David Crockett Jr. in fact existed, then perhaps he also perished in the Indian raid along with his parents. Some sources also believe that an unnamed Crockett daughter was present and was brutally scalped but survived. No records have been found to substantiate such a story. A reference to the massacre is found in an April 27, 1777, letter from Colonel Charles Robertson to Richard Caswell, the governor of North Carolina, in which a dozen unnamed victims are mentioned.15
William and Robert Crockett were named executors of the estate of their slain father and legally represented the interests of Joseph and James, their minor orphaned brothers. Joseph, who had his arm broken by a rifle ball in the attack that killed his parents, lost the use of his hand and fashioned an imitation hand so that he could eat. Joseph later was appointed straymaster for Sullivan County, Tennessee, by Governor William Blout and helped gather stray livestock and return them to their rightful owners.16 James, the youngest Crockett son, was the only family member held captive by the Indian raiders. “He remained with them for seventeen years and nine months,” David wrote in the Narrative, “when he was discovered and recollected by my father and his eldest brother, William Crockett; and was purchased by them from an Indian trader, at a price which I do not remember; but so it was, that he was delivered up to them and they returned him to his relatives.”17 For the rest of his life, those who knew him, including family, referred to James as “Dumb Jimmie.” In Fentress County, Tennessee, where he eventually lived, he was once lost in a hollow on the waters of White Oak that became known as Dumb Jimmie’s Hollow.18 James spent most of his remaining years searching in vain for lost silver and gold mines he had been taken to blindfolded while being held captive.
The murderous attacks profoundly affected the Crockett family. In the aftermath of his parents’ violent deaths, John Crockett was concerned about the safety of surviving family members, especially his wife, Rebecca, but he continued his service in the militia for the duration of the war against Great Britain. John, along with his brothers William, Robert, and Alexander, faithfully served under Colonel Isaac Shelby in the summer of 1780 at the pivotal Battle of King’s Mountain in northwest South Carolina. Credited by many historians as the engagement that turned the tide of the American Revolution’s southern campaign, this fierce battle forever dashed any hope that Britain had of attracting American colonists to their cause.
After gathering at Fort Watauga in what is now Elizabethton, Tennessee, the Crocketts and their fellow Overmountain Men, made up about a half of the colonial force that met the British Loyalists at King’s Mountain. Using Indian-style guerrilla tactics and taking deadly aim with their long rifles, the American patriots either killed or took prisoner large numbers of their enemy, including the British commander, who tried to escape through the battle lines. The entire engagement lasted one hour and five minutes.19
“The next morning, which was Sunday, the scene became really distressing; the wives and children of the poor Tories came in, in great numbers,” wrote James Collins, one of the backcountry patriots who took part in the battle.
Their husbands, fathers, and brothers. Lay dead in heaps, while others lay wounded or dying; a melancholy sight indeed! We proceeded to bury the dead, but it was badly done; they were thrown into convenient piles and covered with old logs, the bark of trees, and rocks; yet not so as to secure them from becoming a prey to the beasts of the forest, or the vultures of the air; and the wolves became so plenty that it was dangerous for anyone to be out at night, for several miles around; also, the hogs in the neighborhood gathered into the place to devour the flesh of men.20
The plunder of battle, including horses, guns, powder, and lead, was distributed to the victors. Articles of clothing also were taken from the dead Tories. The combat-hardened patriots had not forgotten British atrocities and their refusal to grant quarter to prisoners. As a result, at King’s Mountain, many captive enemy survivors were tortured, bayoneted, or hacked to death with sabers. Some were given cursory trials and several were hanged.
“The overmountain men had proved their worth and had settled a long awaited score,” Joseph A. Swann said of King’s Mountain. “The battle was a testimony to the tough resourcefulness of the proud UlsterScots and the deadly accuracy of their long rifles. The superior range and accuracy of the rifles of the overmountain men had proved far superior to the heavier, smooth bored muskets used by the Tories.”
Those frontier Scot pioneers were establishing a name for themselves as effective fighters and excellent marksmen—a reputation that David Crockett, as the son of one of the heroes of that battle, would take to a legendary level. On a larger level, this kind of brutal fighting, which often culminated in massacres, helped establish a martial precedent, one that challenged the traditional methods of warfare, and for which the nineteenth-century West would become known.