Transcript

8.21.25 · Smithsonian Magazine

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and to
0:05
day I will be reading content from smithsonianmag dot com.
0:10
As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading service intended
0:13
for people who are blind or have other disabilities that
0:16
make it difficult to read printed material. Please join me
0:20
now for the first article titled how Davy Crockett, the
0:23
rugged frontiersman killed at the Alamo, became an unlikely American hero.
0:29
During his lifetime, Crockett, who went by David not Davy,
0:33
shaped his own myth in the twentieth century. His legacy
0:37
got a boost from none other than Walt Disney by
0:41
Greg Dougherty. When David Crockett died at the Battle of
0:45
the Alamo in eighteen thirty six, he was already as
0:48
much of a myth as a man known to Americans
0:52
far and wide as Davy, a name he rarely, if
0:55
ever used. He was celebrated as a peerless hunter and
0:59
fearless fighter, the embodiment of the nation's rugged, pioneering spirit.
1:04
Everything about him, including his death, was mythologized, says Michael Wallace,
1:09
author of the twenty eleven biography David Crockett The Lion
1:13
of the West, and he had a lot to do
1:16
with creating a mythology himself. He was a wonderful down
1:20
home country boy story teller. By the time of his
1:24
death at age forty nine, Crockett had inspired at least
1:27
one anonymously authored biography, been satirized in a hugely popular
1:32
stage play, served three terms in Conquress, and was even
1:36
touted as a possible presidential candidate. The myth continued to
1:41
grow after Crockett's death, including the legend that he'd killed
1:45
his first bear at age three, an unlikely childhood milestone,
1:49
although he would eventually slay hundreds of the animals. In
1:53
the mid nineteen fifties, he became a hero to millions
1:56
of young baby boomers thanks to a glamorized betrayal on
2:00
a Walt Disney TV show in its hit themed song,
2:03
The Ballad of Davy Crockett. At the same time, skeptics
2:07
weighed in, calling him a braggart, a drunk, and a
2:10
wildly inappropriate role model for America's youth. Historians have now
2:15
spent the better part of two centuries trying to disentangle
2:19
the man from the myth, often disagreeing about which was which.
2:23
In fact, even the precise circumstances of Crockett's death remained
2:27
shrouded in mystery to this day. The lyrics of the
2:31
Ballad of Davy Crockett may have convinced generations that their
2:35
hero was born on a mountain top in Tennessee, but
2:39
his actual birthplace was on lower ground near the Knallachucky
2:42
River in what was then known as the state of
2:45
Franklin and would only later become part of Tennessee. The
2:50
date was August seventeenth, seventeen eighty six, three years after
2:54
the end of the American Revolution. When the new nation
2:57
consisted of just thirteen states and stretched no farther west
3:01
than the Mississippi River, it truly was the American frontier.
3:06
In seventeen eighty four, North Carolina ceded some of its
3:10
western lands, now part of Tennessee, to the federal government.
3:14
Residents of these remote counties campaigned to establish the new
3:18
state of Franklin, but they failed to gather enough Congressional
3:22
support to secure statehood. Despite this setback, the State of
3:26
Franklin endured operating as an independent entity until seventeen eighty nine,
3:32
when its counties rejoined North Carolina. Crockett was the fifth
3:37
of six sons among nine total children born to John
3:41
and Rebecca Crockett. As my father was very poor, and
3:45
living as he did far back in the backwoods, he
3:48
had neither the means nor the opportunity to give me
3:51
or any of the rest of his children any learning,
3:54
Crockett wrote in his Folkesy eighteen thirty four autobiography. By
3:59
his own account, he spent just four days in a
4:02
class room. Crockett's father was a farmer and tavern owner,
4:06
and not very successful at either. The family moved often
4:11
and was constantly in debt. As a boy, Crockett spent
4:14
much of his time working on neighboring farms to help
4:17
pay off his father's debts, as did his siblings. Married
4:22
just before he turned twenty, Crockett also tried his hand
4:25
at farming, but proved better at providing for his family
4:29
as a hunter, particularly of bears, which he'd track with
4:32
the pack of dogs and finish off with a rifle.
4:36
He'd then butcher the animal in the field and bring
4:38
its meat home to cure in his smoke house. Supposedly,
4:42
the choicest cuts from bear came from the paws and thighs,
4:46
Although cured side meat and the spare ribs of young
4:49
bears also were favored Wallace Wright's in his biography. In
4:54
eighteen thirteen, Crockett joined one of the Tennessee militias that
4:59
was forming to a unless slaughter of at least two
5:02
hundred and fifty settlers at Fort Mims in what is
5:05
now Alabama by a faction of the Creek Nation under
5:09
the command of future American President Andrew Jackson. The militiamen
5:13
descended on the Creek village of Taleshachi, killing close to
5:17
two hundred Creek warriors, women and children. In his autobiography,
5:23
Crockett recalled seeing a Creek woman shoot an arrow from
5:26
the doorway of a house where a group of warriors
5:29
had taken refuge, killing a militia lieutenant. The woman had
5:33
at least twenty balls blown through her, he wrote, we
5:37
now shot them like dogs, and then set the house
5:39
on fire and burned it up with the forty six
5:42
warriors in it. After the end of the Creek War
5:45
in eighteen fourteen, Crockett returned to farming and hunting and
5:50
made his first bids for elected office, serving variously as
5:54
an officer in the militia whose leaders were voted in
5:57
by their men, a justice of the peace and a
6:00
town commissioner. In eighteen twenty one, he won a seat
6:04
in Tennessee's state legislature. Setting his sights higher, he ran
6:10
for the United States House of Representatives, losing on his
6:13
first try but winning a seat in eighteen twenty seven.
6:18
Already nationally known, Crockett became a colorful and highly quotable
6:22
figure in Congress, burnishing his reputation as a man of
6:26
the people. Although he never managed to get a single
6:29
piece of legislation passed, Crockett revealed himself to be a
6:33
champion of the poor and disadvantaged, consistently voting for or
6:37
introducing proposals to protect them from laws he felt were
6:41
unjust or discriminatory. Mark Durr wrote in his nineteen ninety
6:46
three biography The Frontiersman, the Real Life and the Many
6:49
Legends of Davy Crockett. While political adversaries caricatured Crockett as
6:55
a backwoods buffoon who wore a coonskin cap and hunting
6:59
garb on the house floor, more objective witnesses said he
7:03
dressed as formally as anyone else. In fact, Wallace and
7:06
other biographers maintained that Crockett rarely wore a coonskin cap anywhere,
7:12
and only started donning one late in life, after the
7:15
public had come to expect it. Crockett also became a
7:19
leading critic of his old commander Jackson, who'd assumed the
7:23
presidency in eighteen twenty nine. Despite his own reputation as
7:27
a former Indian fighter, Crockett believed that Jackson's eighteen thirty
7:32
Indian Removal Act treated Native American tribes too harshly, calling
7:36
it oppression with the vengeance the Act claimed to relocate
7:40
the tribes from their lands in the eastern US to
7:43
territory west of the Mississippi River. Willingly or otherwise, Crockett's
7:49
stance would cost him his eighteen thirty one reelection bid,
7:53
though he retook his seat two years later. Crockett's opposition
7:57
to Jackson, as well as his national name or recognition,
8:01
led the recently formed Whig Party to urge him to
8:04
run for president on its ticket in the upcoming eighteen
8:07
thirty six election. Crockett campaigned briefly, but ultimately yielded his
8:13
spot to three other Whigs, including future President William Henry
8:17
Harrison and future Secretary of State Daniel Webster. They all
8:22
lost to the Democratic Party candidate Martin Van Buren. Meanwhile,
8:27
Crockett lost another bid for re election to Congress, leaving
8:31
office for good in March eighteen thirty five. Later that year,
8:35
partly at the urging of his friend and fellow Tennessee
8:38
politician Sam Houston, he headed to Texas for a fresh start.
8:43
I told the people of my district that if they
8:45
saw fit to reelect me, I would serve them as
8:48
faithfully as I had done, Crockett reportedly told a crowd
8:52
shortly after his arrival. But if not, they might go
8:55
to Hell, and I would go to Texas. I was beaten, gentlemen,
8:59
and here I am. At the time, Texas was fighting
9:02
to gain its independence from the Mexican Republic. The promise
9:06
of cheap and abundant land had drawn so many settlers
9:10
from across the U. S Border that the Mexican government
9:13
banned further emigration to Texas in eighteen thirty Disputes between
9:18
settlers and government officials finally erupted into the Texas Revolution
9:23
in October eighteen thirty five. The Mexican army's attempts to
9:27
subdue the revolutionaries, led to several violent clashes, most famously
9:32
the thirteen day Siege of the Alamo in San Antonio
9:36
in February and March eighteen thirty six. It was at
9:40
the Alamo that Crockett met his end on March sixth,
9:44
eighteen thirty six, adding a mysterious concluding chapter to his myth.
9:49
In many newspaper accounts, he went down fighting. The Arkansas Advocate,
9:54
for example, reported that he shot twenty three Mexican soldiers
9:58
before dying, with the butcher knife in one hand and
10:02
the remnants of his broken rifle in the other, presumably
10:05
after swinging it like a club. Both weapons, the paper added,
10:09
were bathed in the blood of his enemies. Other papers,
10:13
such as the Vermont Telegraph, suggested that he and several
10:17
other men had attempted to surrender, but the Mexicans refused
10:21
and made them fight to the death anyway, after which
10:24
their bodies were thrown into a heap and burned. One
10:28
slightly later report, apparently originating in a Texas newspaper, claimed
10:33
the men had surrendered and been taken as prisoners of war,
10:37
only to be executed on the orders of Mexican General
10:41
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. While that version of events
10:45
might have undermined the legend of Crockett's heroism, it also
10:49
made the Mexican's actions seem all the more reprehensible. Remember,
10:54
the Alamo became the rallying cry of the revolution, which
10:58
ended in April eighteen thirty six, when troops under Crockett's
11:01
friend Houston forced the Mexican army to retreat south of
11:05
the Rio Grande. Crockett's tragic death gave his myth new life.
11:11
While he might have otherwise been written off by history
11:15
as a washed up politician and relic of an earlier time,
11:19
he was now a bonified martyr, at least from the
11:22
American perspective. Mexicans might have thought otherwise. A series of
11:27
publications called Crockett Almanacs, first printed in eighteen thirty five,
11:33
continued until eighteen fifty six, chronicling the fallen hero's colorful adventures,
11:39
both real and imagined, for a new generation a century later,
11:44
starting in December nineteen fifty four, Crockett's life received the
11:48
Disney treatment in a five episode TV series that branded
11:52
him the King of the Wild Frontier. Crockett was portrayed
11:56
by Fesk Parker, a lanky young actor, completely with his rifle,
12:00
Old Betsy, and of course, a coonskin cap. Parker would
12:05
later play Crockett's contemporary, Daniel Boone, also in a coonskin
12:10
cap in a nineteen sixty four TV series, resulting in
12:14
a lot of confusion regarding the two frontiersmen. The Crockett
12:18
series became an unheard of hit, driven almost entirely by
12:22
elementary students and preschoolers, the first hint of the cultural
12:27
power that the baby boomer generation, whose oldest members were
12:30
barely ten at that point, would wield for decades to come.
12:35
Coonskin caps became the male boomer's first fashion craze, leading
12:39
to a spike in the price of raccoon pelts, although
12:42
most of the hats were made from fau fur. Director
12:46
Steven Spielberg recalled being chased home from school in the
12:49
third grade by a mob of classmates because his parents
12:53
hadn't bought him a coonskin cap, yet, not wanting to
12:57
ignore the other half of the youthful population, or failed
13:01
to cash in on them, many stores also offered a
13:04
polycrocket hat named after Crockett's first wife by one estimate,
13:10
some three thousand different Crocket related products filled the stores
13:13
in nineteen fifty five, selling more than one hundred million
13:17
dollars worth of merchandise in a matter of months. A
13:21
child with indulgent parents could dress like Davy from head
13:24
to toe, heat breakfast from a Crockett cereal bowl, go
13:28
off to school with a Crockett lunch box, and then
13:30
come home to play with a cap firing Old Betsy
13:34
Frontier rifle. The TV show's theme song yielded multiple hit records,
13:39
three of which were in the top ten at the
13:41
same time. All of this adulation became too much for
13:46
some adults, who considered Crockett about as bad a role
13:49
model for America's youth as could be found. Murray Kempton,
13:53
a popular newspaper journalist of the day, devoted four separate
13:57
columns to debunking just about every positive aspect of the
14:02
Crockett legend. Harper's Magazine called him a juvenile delinquent who
14:07
deserted his wife and children, weaseled his way out of
14:10
the army, and did everything he possibly could to avoid
14:14
an honest day's work. He never was king of anything,
14:17
the magazine added, except maybe the Tennessee Tall Tales and
14:21
Bourbon Samplers Association. In fact, whether Crockett actually deserted his
14:26
family is debatable. Wallace notes in his biography that the
14:31
frontiersman's second wife, Elizabeth, took their children and moved out
14:35
of their home to live with relatives no longer able
14:38
to tolerate all the hunting, excessive drinking, and his chronic
14:43
pattern of abandoning his family. The charge that he'd weaseled
14:47
his way out of the army refers to his paying
14:50
a young neighbor to serve as a substitute and finish
14:53
out the final month of his enlistment, a fairly common
14:56
practice at the time. As to Crockett's post that he'd
15:00
once killed one hundred and five bears and less than
15:03
a year, Harper's scoffed that his fellow tipplers refused to
15:08
believe a word of it, on the sensible grounds that
15:10
Davy couldn't count that high, but others rushed to Crockett's defense.
15:16
Crockett has made it popular to be an American again.
15:19
The television comedian Red Skelton told a reporter, adding, to
15:23
see our children laugh, to see ourselves laugh with our children,
15:26
because of the Davy Crockett craze is one of the
15:29
greatest forces for good this country has had in years.
15:33
The Chamber of Commerce in San Antonio, home of the Alamo,
15:37
declared a week long birthday celebration in Crockett's honor, and
15:42
invited the editor of Harper's to attend. A congressman from Tennessee,
15:46
Crockett's home state, introduced a bill to install a statue
15:50
of him in the U. S. Capitol. Unfortunately, the state's
15:54
two allotted slots were already taken, one of them by
15:58
crockett nemesis Jackson. If Crockett's modern fame peaked in the
16:03
nineteen fifties, he was far from forgotten thereafter. John Wayne
16:08
donned a Coonskin cap to play him in the nineteen
16:11
sixty epoch The Alamo. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wayne's Crockett doesn't surrender
16:17
and isn't captured. Instead, after being mortally wounded, he tosses
16:22
his torch into a powder magazine, blowing himself and much
16:26
of the Alamo to smithereens. In nineteen eighty eight, Disney
16:31
produced another mini series, The New Adventures of Davy Crockett,
16:35
with Johnny Cash portraying the frontiersman in later life. As
16:40
recently as twenty twenty four, Crockett was back on the
16:43
big screen in the movie The Ballad of Davy Crockett. Today,
16:48
visitors to Disneyland in California can paddle one of Davy
16:52
Crockett's Explorer canoes, while those at Disney World in Florida
16:57
can enjoy a glass of fest Parker, Reasling or Frontier
17:01
red at Crockett's tavern. Vacationers at Disneyland Paris can book
17:06
lodging at Disney Davy Crockett Ranch and shop at the
17:10
Alamo Trading Post. Monuments to Crockett dot the U S,
17:15
particularly in Texas and Tennessee. His name is on schools,
17:19
a state park, a national forest, and even a nuclear
17:23
rocket launcher. Since retired, tasty tributes to him include a
17:27
Crockett sandwich, a Crockett cocktail, and Crockett dessert bars. Meanwhile,
17:33
if President Donald Trump's proposed National Garden of American Heroes
17:38
goes according to plan, Crockett will be among the honorees,
17:41
represented life size in marble, granite, bronze, copper, or brass.
17:47
Just in time for the U S's two hundred and
17:49
fiftieth anniversary celebration in July twenty twenty six. Next before
17:56
wales took to the sea, these ten species walked on land.
18:00
By Riley Black, Science Correspondent, The story of whales did
18:05
not begin in the seas. For millions of years before
18:08
beasts like the sinuous Bascillosaurus lived full time in the ocean,
18:13
the shorelines and estuaries of prehistoric Earth were filled with
18:17
amphibious whales that more closely resembled otters and crocodiles than humpbacks.
18:23
The first whales walked. Paleontologists have been pondering whale origins
18:28
since the late nineteenth century. They knew that whales evolved
18:32
from land dwelling ancestors because of vestiges of hind limbs
18:36
sometimes found in whale skeletons and other anatomical clues held
18:41
in common with terrestrial mammals. Who those ancestors were and
18:46
how the transcendent evolutionary change from land to water occurred
18:51
was unclear, But since the nineteen seventies, paleontologists have found
18:56
a vast array of early whales. The fossil fine have
19:00
indicated that whales are artiodactyls, members of the hoofed mammal
19:05
group that includes hippoes and cows, and that aquatic whales
19:09
as we know them represent one offshoot of a diverse
19:13
array of early semi aquatic whales that evolved in the shallows.
19:18
This list offers a fossil highlight reel of some of
19:21
these beasts, Pacacidus. If you were to visit the shores
19:26
of prehistoric Pakistan about fifty million years ago, you might
19:30
see a vaguely dog like mammal trotting along the sand.
19:34
The labrador retriever sized creature was Pacacidus, one of the
19:38
earliest known whales. At a glance, Pacacidus doesn't look like
19:42
it would be able to do much more than doggy paddle,
19:46
but at least two features indicate that this early whale
19:49
spent a significant amount of its time swimming. The eyes
19:53
of pacacidas are relatively high on the mammal's head, similar
19:57
to alligators and crocodiles that peak their eyes and noses
20:00
out of the water to watch the shore. More importantly,
20:04
the bones of pacacidas are relatively dense, a condition paleontologists
20:09
snow as osteosclerosis. The bones of Pacacidus, in other words,
20:15
were a little heavier than those of other mammals of
20:18
comparable size, and acted as a ballast to help the
20:21
carnivore achieve neutral buoyancy in the water and put more
20:25
energy towards swimming than staying submerged. Next itch Thiolistes. Paleontologists
20:33
began finding early whales before they knew what they were
20:36
looking at. In nineteen fifty eight, paleontologists studying fossil teeth
20:42
found in the fifty million year old rock around Gondakas, Pakistan,
20:47
thought that the choppers were unusual enough to signify a
20:50
previously unknown fossil mammal they called itch Thiolistes the fish thief.
20:56
Further explorations in the area eventually turned up more parts
21:00
of the Ichthiolistes skeleton, and by the twenty first century,
21:05
the animals was recognized as a fox size relative of Pacacidas.
21:10
The early whales still had hips fuse to the spine
21:13
and ankle bones that looked like those of its land
21:16
dwelling relatives, but its bones were so dense that running
21:20
fast on land would have risked breaking them. Like its
21:23
close relatives, Ichthiolistes lived around river mouths and estuaries, perhaps
21:30
pushing off the bottom of shallow bodies of water as
21:33
it searched for fish to eat. Next Ambulocetus. Of all
21:39
the early whales uncovered by paleontologists, none has a toothy
21:43
grin quite like Ambulocetus. The forty eight million year old
21:47
whale had a long snout full of sharp, bladelike teeth,
21:51
well suited to nabbing fish and perhaps grabbing unwary small
21:55
creatures from the shores of prehistoric Pakistans estuaries. Ambulocetus was
22:02
a much stronger swimmer than its predecessors, like Pacacetus, The
22:07
mammal's body is much more otter like, and palaeontologists expect
22:11
that Ambulocytus swam by undulating its spine up and down
22:16
while using its paddle like hind feet for an extra push.
22:20
This swim stroke was a predecessor to the way modern
22:23
whales flick their broad tail flukes up and down to
22:27
push themselves through the water while on land. Ambulocidas could
22:31
support its own weight on its limbs, but was not
22:34
a runner like a wolf. The large broad feet of
22:38
Ambulocetus hint that it moved more like an otter or
22:41
sea lion on land than its terrestrial ancestors, next Cuchacitas.
22:49
Early whale evolution is not a simple story of mammals
22:53
that became better and better adapted to life in the water,
22:56
rather than a straight line of progress. The oldest part
22:59
of the whale family tree as many different branches representing
23:03
forms that were quite at home living between land and water.
23:08
Among them is the forty six million year old Cuchasidas.
23:12
Like many early whales, Cuchacidas was a roughly wolf sized
23:16
animal that lived in brackish habitats along shores of what
23:20
is now India and Pakistan. Its snout is exceptionally long
23:25
and shallow, good for snapping quickly at slippery prey. Based
23:29
on the mammals limbs and hips, paleontologists think Cuchacidas could
23:34
still support its weight on land, but lived much as
23:37
otters do, undulating in the water in search of small
23:41
morsels before coming out of the prehistoric pool to warm
23:45
its fur in the sun. Myacetas adapting to life at
23:50
sea required more of early whales than shifting their swimming techniques.
23:55
All modern whales give birth at sea. Their offspring emerging
23:59
into the world whale first to help prevent them from drowning,
24:02
as a head first berth would risk. When this shift
24:06
happened is unclear, but the skeleton of the mother whale myacetus,
24:11
indicates that it was after forty seven point five million
24:15
years ago. Myacetus was more adept in the water than
24:19
earlier whales, Its spine was flexible for up and down
24:23
swimming motions, and its digits were flatter, implying webbing in life.
24:28
But one specimen included what has been interpreted as a
24:31
fetus in a position that suggests it would have been
24:34
born head first on land. Even as whales were becoming
24:38
better and better swimmers, they still had to return to
24:41
land to give birth Fio mycetas The coasts of what
24:46
are now Pakistan and India were a crucial place for
24:49
whale origins. The earliest whales and their ancestors are found
24:53
there in rocks more than fifty million years ago, but
24:57
by about forty three million years ago, whales were straying
25:01
farther and farther from familiar shores. Piomycetus from Egypt marks
25:06
the early days of when whales began spreading throughout Earth's
25:10
marine realm. In life, Piomycetus would have been about ten
25:14
feet long. On land, the whale could walk, but only
25:18
in an awkward and clumsy way, sticking close to the
25:21
water where it was more comfortable swimming, just as seals
25:24
stay close to the water to day. Like other related whales,
25:29
it had conical grabbing teeth towards the front of the
25:31
jaw and shearing teeth at the cheek, along with clewes
25:36
from the whale's skull that hit at strong muscle attachments.
25:39
Paleontologists think Phiomcetus had a powerful bite it relied upon
25:44
to prey upon sharks, turtles, and maybe other early whales.
25:49
Georgia Seatas whales began crossing oceans when they still had legs.
25:55
Fossils dating to about forty million years ago from the
25:58
southeastern United States leave no doubt. Georgia SETAs, first found
26:03
in Georgia, looks very similar to whales like miacetas found
26:07
in India and Pakistan, but must have crossed the ancient
26:10
Atlantic to get there. Like miacets, the seal size Georgia
26:15
SETAs belonged to an early whale group called protocetds. They
26:19
still had arms and legs with paddle like hands and feet,
26:22
but their spines had become more flexible to undulate and
26:26
push them through the water. So far as paleontologists can tell,
26:30
Georgia SETAs did not have a tail fluke like modern whales,
26:34
but was still a strong enough swimmer to cross vast
26:37
ocean distances. In fact, paleontologists have hypothesized that the hind
26:43
limbs of Georgia SETAs were no longer as important for
26:46
moving on land, as acting like rudders in the water.
26:50
The whale's hips only barely connected to the spine. If
26:53
future finds confirmed the notion, it may be that Georgia
26:57
asiatas spent little time, if any, on land and was
27:01
mostly aquatic while still having legs Paragocidas. Once early whales
27:08
were able to swim and survive in the open ocean,
27:11
they began spreading all over the world. Around the same
27:15
time as Georgia Asidas was swimming through the waters over
27:19
what's now the southeastern Us, the similar Paragocitus was living
27:23
along the coast of prehistoric Peru. So far, Paragocitus is
27:28
known from the partial skeleton of a single animal. The
27:33
bones showed that the hips of the animal could still
27:36
hold up the whale's weight on land. Yet, like seals
27:38
and sea lions, the living animal was likely more graceful
27:42
in the water than on land. Papacidas and Ageacidas are
27:47
the last two whale ancestors. This concludes readings from smithsonianmag
27:55
dot com. For today. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore.
27:59
Thank you for listening, and have a great day.