oral Courage.--The Squirrel Hunt.--A
Candidate for the Legislature.--Characteristic
Electioneering.--Specimens of his Eloquence.--Great Pecuniary
Calamity.--Expedition to the Far West.--Wild Adventures.--The Midnight
Carouse.--A Cabin Reared.

The wealthy and the prosperous are not disposed to leave the comforts
of a high civilization for the hardships of the wilderness. Most of the
pioneers who crowded to the New Purchase were either energetic young
men who had their fortunes to make, or families who by misfortune had
encountered impoverishment. But there was still another class. There
were the vile, the unprincipled, the desperate; vagabonds seeking whom
they might devour; criminals escaping the penalty of the laws which
they had violated.

These were the men who shot down an Indian at sight, as they would
shoot a wolf; merely for the fun of it; who robbed the Indian of his
gun and game, burned his wigwam, and atrociously insulted his wife and
daughters. These were the men whom no law could restrain; who brought
disgrace upon the name of a white man, and who often provoked the
ignorant savage to the most dreadful and indiscriminate retaliation.

So many of these infamous men flocked to this New Purchase that life
there became quite undesirable. There were no legally appointed
officers of justice, no organized laws. Every man did what was pleasing
in his own sight. There was no collecting of debts, no redress for
violence, no punishment for cheating or theft.

Under these circumstances, there was a general gathering of the
well-disposed inhabitants of the cabins scattered around, to adopt some
measures for their mutual protection. Several men were appointed
justices of peace, with a set of resolute young men, as constables, to
execute their commissions. These justices were invested with almost
dictatorial power. They did not pretend to know anything about written
law or common law. They were merely men of good sound sense, who could
judge as to what was right in all ordinary intercourse between man and
man.

A complaint would be entered to Crockett that one man owed another
money and refused to pay him. Crockett would send his constables to
arrest the man, and bring him to his cabin. After hearing both parties,
if Crockett judged the debt to be justly due, and that it could be
paid, he would order the man's horse, cow, rifle, or any other property
he owned, to be seized and sold, and the debt to be paid. If the