We may be the last generation of Americans to whom the words “coonskin cap” immediately conjure up the image of a leather clad man wildly swinging his musket in a desperate last stand. That man, Davy Crockett, “king of the wild frontier,” may soon be forgotten.
To previous generations, and any good student of American history, however, the name Davy Crockett remains alive and well. His Disney-fied persona that awed an entire generation in the 1950s was derived from myths and folklore surrounding his life a century before. The man who fought bears, told his own constituents to “go to hell,” and met his fate at the Alamo defined much of the “rugged individualism” that Americans still crave.
Like it or not, Crockett’s legendary life helped shape both the nobler and the darker sides of the American conscience. And similar to many historical giants, Crockett is a complex, sometimes contradictory figure. Yet in peeling away the myths and folklore about him, we must remember that he lived in a time marred by the spread of slavery. It will not surprise Americans today that as a Tennessean and Southerner, Crockett owned enslaved people; at least two, according to the 1830 census.
