Crockett’s Tennessee Westward Movement

Crockett’s Tennessee Westward Movement. . , In his nearly half century of life, David Crockett literally migrated from east to west Tennessee. From his birthplace near Limestone, to his last home in Rutherford (Gibson County), the Crockett story weaves its way across the Volunteer state for five decades until he exited at Memphis in November of 1835, leaving his native home for Texas and martyrdom at the Alamo., “I had now one old horse, and a couple of two year old colts. They were both broke to the haiter, and my father-in-law proposed, that, if I went, he would go with me, and take one horse to help me move. So we all fixed up, and I packed my two colts with as many of my things as they could bear; and away we went across the mountains.”- Davy Crockett. , [ Sidebar : ] , Tennessee Native People , The name of Tennessee is derived from the Cherokee word Tanasi or Tanasqui., The primary Indian nations that inhabited Tennessee were Chickasaw, Cherokee, Koasati, Quapaw, Shawnee, and Yuchi. In 1775, Judge Richard Henderson of the new Transylvania Company enters into an illegal treaty with the Cherokees at Sycamore Shoals to claim land for white settlement of Kentucky and parts of Tennessee. The treaty was overturned by Virginia. Cherokees later fought the American colonists and lost most of their lands., Congressman David Crockett vehemently opposed President Andrew Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal Bill which eventually led to the mass exodus of most Indians from their ancestral lands – and becomes known as the “Trail of Tears.”, Cherokee Chief John Ross profusely thanked Crockett in an eloquent eight page letter for his heroic stand against Jackson. David Crockett’s vote on behalf of Native peoples cost him his bid for re-election in 1813.