David Crockett: The Lion of the West

by Michael Wallis

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, May 2011

His name was David Crockett. He never signed his name any other way, but popular culture transformed his memory into “Davy” Crockett, while Hollywood gave him a coonskin hat that he hardly ever wore. So wildly popular was this colorful outdoorsman-turned-politician that he became a legendary figure even in his own lifetime.

Born into a poor family in 1786 on the eastern Tennessee frontier, Crockett had a Huck Finn-like childhood that could have been something out of the dime-store novels his legend later spawned. As befits his myth, Crockett did indeed display a preternatural talent for hunting, but he never “killed him a bar” when he was only three, as one ditty proclaims. While Crockett’s boyhood exploits are truly remarkable, even by frontier standards, it was his parents’ dire financial circumstances that instilled in him an outsider’s sensibility. Masterfully framing Crockett’s life against the volatile history of the frontier, Michael Wallis recounts the store of the young hunter who would disappear alone into the unexplored canebrakes, returning months later with harrowing tales of death traps and murderous natives.

So extraordinary were Crockett’s exploits, so remarkable is storytelling gifts, that he distinguished himself first as a wildly popular soldier and then as a budding politician. Elected to Congress in 1826, he achieved great prominences in the new capital for his homespun ways and support of the dispossessed, yet Crockett was too much for Washington to handle. Eventually breaking with Andrew Jackson and his punitive Indian policies, Crockett considered running for president, wrote a best-selling memoir, and became the inspiration for an immensely popular play, The Lion of the West. As famous as Crockett became, however, his political career quickly faltered, his folksy charm no match for Andrew Jackson’s venom.

No part of Crockett’s life remains as controversial as his death in Texas in 1836, where he had migrated, hoping to build a new life. Challenging a multitude of wrongful assertions, Wallis, using recently discovered sources, conclusively demonstrates that Crockett neither surrendered to the Mexicans nor was taken hostage in the battle at the Alamo.

With David Crockett, Wallis has written a three-dimensional portrait of the famed pioneer whose dreams reflected the consciousness of a restless nation with a distinctly westward gaze. This absorbing biography distills fast from fiction and stands alone as a vivid evocation of a true American hero and the rough-and-tumble times in which he lived.