In the US, there’s a huge amount of mythology around the “frontier.” It really wasn’t that long ago, mythologically speaking, but it’s a big blob of lore, some of it fictional, in American minds. Since the frontier era lasted until just a little more than a century ago, many of the heroic characters are based on real people. One of them is Davy Crockett (the “King of the Wild Frontier”) — he was a real person, born August 17, 1786 in what is now Tennessee.
In the town where he grew up, Crockett was known for two things: he was a pretty good hunter, and an even better talker. He went into politics in the early 1800s and was elected to the Tennessee state legislature, then in 1827 was elected to the US Congress. He opposed the policies of the current administration, led by Andrew Jackson, and possibly as a result lost the 1831 election.
After losing, Crockett took his rifle and stomped out of town, arriving in Tejas, Mexico, which is now part of Texas in the US. There was a revolution there, against the Mexican government, and Crockett fought and died in the battle of the Alamo. The Mexican army decisively won that battle, but later media coverage has made it another facet of American (and Texan) mythology.
The media played a big role in Crockett’s image. Even during his lifetime he was featured in publications and almanacs for his amazing, even difficult-to-believe exploits. And his “coonskin cap,” which was a hat made out of the fur of a raccoon — he evidently really did have one, and reports mention him wearing it. Some number of his famous deeds seem to be based on his own exaggerated stories, and as time went on and his legend grew, others seemed to be concocted by whoever was doing the telling. For instance, nobody recorded exactly what happened at the end of the Alamo battle — in some stories from the time, Crockett surrendered and was executed — but a more popular version held that his body was found in a room with sixteen bodies of Mexican soldiers, and he had dispatched them with only his knife.
The Davy Crockett myth accelerated enormously when the Walt Disney company produced a TV show about him in the mid-1950s. It was accompanied, as you might expect, by nationwide merchandising, so there were countless kids wearing fake “coonskin caps,” carrying toy rifles, and dressing in the kind of fanciful frontier clothing that the real Crockett probably never really wore. By coincidence, Crockett was played in the TV series by Fess Parker, whose birthday was yesterday, the day before Crockett’s.
There’s been a Davy Crockett character in dozens of movies, there have been two stage plays about him (one a musical), and he appears in lots of books with various degrees of realism. As for his mythical achievements, one story held that he was such a good marksman that he aimed his rifle at the blade of an axe from 40 yards (37 meters) and the bullet hit the blade so accurately it was split in two by the axe. A later TV show, Mythbusters, investigated that particular myth and concluded that, well, yes, Davy Crockett could plausibly have done it. Whether he actually ever did though? Nobody really knows.
