were committed by Santa Anna and his lieutenants. In the United
States there was great enthusiasm for the struggling Texans, and
many bold backwoodsmen and Indian-fighters swarmed to their help.
Among them the two most famous were Sam Houston and David
Crockett. Houston was the younger man, and had already led an
extraordinary and varied career. When a mere lad he had run away
from home and joined the Cherokees, living among them for some
years; then he returned home. He had fought under Andrew Jackson
in his campaigns against the Creeks, and had been severely
wounded at the battle of the Horse-shoe Bend. He had risen to the
highest political honors in his State, becoming governor of
Tennessee; and then suddenly, in a fit of moody longing for the
life of the wilderness, he gave up his governorship, left the
State, and crossed the Mississippi, going to join his old
comrades, the Cherokees, in their new home along the waters of
the Arkansas. Here he dressed, lived, fought, hunted, and drank
precisely like any Indian, becoming one of the chiefs.

David Crockett was born soon after the Revolutionary War. He,
too, had taken part under Jackson in the campaigns against the
Creeks, and had afterward become a man of mark in Tennessee, and
gone to Congress as a Whig; but he had quarreled with Jackson,
and been beaten for Congress, and in his disgust he left the
State and decided to join the Texans. He was the most famous
rifle-shot in all the United States, and the most successful
hunter, so that his skill was a proverb all along the border.

David Crockett journeyed south, by boat and horse, making his way
steadily toward the distant plains where the Texans were waging
their life-and-death fight. Texas was a wild place in those days,