In 1834, David Crockett was a celebrity — perhaps the most famous man in America. The bear hunter from the canebrakes of Tennessee had been elected to Congress, where he advocated for small-landholding settlers who faced constant pressure over land deeds from wealthy landholders seeking to enlarge their holdings. He opposed the Indian Removal Act — which would lead to the Trail of Tears — which put him crossways with Andrew Jackson — and his own constituents.
He lost an election in 1831, but was re-elected in 1833. He lost again in 1835, and told his constituents that they could go to hell, and he would go to Texas. As Steve Earle’s song says, you know the rest.
Many people painted his portrait, and David didn’t much care for the work. He thought the artists made him look like a Methodist preacher. When John Gadsby Chapman approached him to sit for him, Crockett insisted on being portrayed as he saw himself — as a bear hunter from the Harricane (the tangled blow-downs of west Tennessee). Crockett figured that such a portrait was “better worth looking at.”
He collaborated with Champman to get the details right, from the moccasins on up. He was particularly attentive to getting the position of his belt knife and hatchet right. He had to borrow a rifle — and he didn’t want some fancy showpiece.
Chapman later wrote:
He was very precise in belt-arrangement of his tools. The “butcher’ in easy and prompt reach of his right hand as well as powder horn and bullet-pouch. The Hatchet, as reserve, on the left hip, sufficiently accessible, just balancing weight, leaving nothing in the way, belt upwards of free handling of his rifle, and limbs clear for any sort of work they might be wanted for.
A rifle to conform to his fastidious ideas of perfection, proved difficult to procure about Washington. He had insurmountable objections to every sort of ornamental mountings on a gun, especially if of brass or polished metal, even to breech plate.
At last one was found, belonging to an old sportsman on the Potomac, wanting only two or three inches of length of barrel to suit him to a tee. It was a rough affair to look at, as the picture bears witness of, but he was so well pleased with it, that on a Sunday visit, made to my home in Alexandria he proposed and we make its owner a special visit.
No coonskin cap, but a fine beaver felt hat of moderate brim, which he raises in a hallooo. The portrait is thus a fine, authentic glimpse of a hunter of the mid-1830s, one that would have been seen in the backcountry of many states east of the Mississippi, or out in the Shining Mountains of the Far West.
Copano Bay Press is currently offering a beautiful limited edition print.
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Frontier-like conditions persisted in the American backcountry long after the actual frontier — as defined by the delimiting area of settlement — had moved on. We don’t think of 19th Century Maryland in that light, but well into the 19th century, the western part of the state was still quite wild.
This was the hunting ground of Meshach Browning.
Browning (his first name is pronounced Mee-shack) was born in 1791. He was a farmer and cattleman by vocation — but a hunter to his bones. He penned a memoir titled Forty-Four Years, The Life of a Hunter, which detailed a life spent in pursuit of bear and deer in the rugged Maryland backcountry, which he loved deeply. He got damn near poetic about it:
“My mind cannot imagine a more beautiful sight than could be obtained from the highest grounds of the Hoop-Pole Ridge, which commanded a view of the valley between that and the great Back-Bone … It was a grand sight to watch the tall grass, rolling in beautiful waves with every breeze which passed over its smooth surface, as well as the herds of deer skipping and playing with each other. It was not a strange thing to see a great lubberly-looking bear forcing his way through the grass, when every deer which got a sight or scent of him would bound off, with tail erect, toward the nearest thicket.”
His hunting life was adventurous. He was a solid, athletic man who relished mixing it up with the game he pursued — including some knife-in-fist bouts with both deer and bear.
Mostly, of course, he wielded a muzzleloading long rifle. Like any rifleman who can afford it, he had more than one rifle. One of them is in the Smithsonian.
Classic Lancaster-style rifle. Don’t know what the caliber is.
In the introduction to his memoir, a friend wrote:
Meshach Browning’s life may be deemed an eventful one, considering the almost constant risks he ran of losing it in his many dangerous conflicts with bears, panthers, wolves, and wounded bucks; for the latter are scarcely less to be feared than the former, as their sharp horns, and keen, cut- ting hoofs, are wielded with as much strength and skill, both in attack and defence, as are the teeth and claws of the beasts of prey. It is impossible to state with accuracy how many of the denizens of the forest have fallen victims to his unerring rifle and deadly hunting-knife; for he hunted regularly during forty-four years, and thus the greater portion of that time supplied his family, besides occasionally selling large quantities of venison and bear-meat. Comparatively but few of his many hunting scenes are here referred to ; but he stated to me that, from the best estimate he could make, ard from data considered reliable, he had killed from vi INTRODUCTION. eighteen hundred to two thousand deer, from three to four hundred bears, about fifty panthers and catamounts (quite as ferocious, and not much less in size than the panther), with scores of wolves and wildcats. And although now incapable, owing to age and infirmities, of pursuing the game with his wonted vigor, the “ruling passion” is still strong ; for within the past few weeks his skill and perse- verance have been rewarded by the capture, in his traps, of an otter and a catamount, of the few now surviving his former achievements.
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Browning was a man of regional renown, as was Philip Tome, who led a similar life in north-central Pennsylvania. Born in 1782, Tome had a long career in the woods, which he recounted in a memoir Pioneer Life; or, Thirty Years a Hunter — Being Scenes and Adventures in the Life of Philip Tome, published in 1854.
As Penn State University Press, which published an edition of the memoir, states:
Pioneer Life is a mostly autobiographical narrative of the life of Philip Tome. Tome was born in 1782 near present-day Harrisburg and lived on the upper Susquehanna for much of his life. He tells colorful (and mostly true) tales about his hunting exploits in the Pennsylvania wilderness, as he tracked elk, wolves, bears, panthers, foxes, and other large animals through the state’s north-central mountains, earning wide renown among his contemporaries. His stories contain suspenseful chase scenes, accidents, and narrow escapes, inviting the reader to view a still-wild Pennsylvania through the eyes of one who “was never conquered by man or animal.”
In addition to his exploits as a hunter, Tome also worked as a translator among the Seneca who still resided in their ancient lands, which had been the scene of much drama and terror during the American Revolution.
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It is striking that Crockett, despite his political profile, identified as a hunter till the end. Browning and Tome built their identity around the chase. These men, and many more like them — some famous, some regionally noted, some utterly obscure — form an American archetype that endures to this day.
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Davy Crockett went out to TexasTo fight at the AlamoOld Will Travis never told himTexas is in MexicoIt’s a bloody messYou know the rest
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