The famous "Naturalist" Davy Crockett?

[silverwolf]

I was just curious as too why De La Pena referred to David Crockett as the famous "Naturalist" David Crockett. Surely De La Pena did not think David Crockett was just a humble botanist who came to Texas looking for interesting flowers and fauna? If Davids reputation reached Texas it certainly would have spilled over into the Mexican press about the congressman about whom great tales of bravery were often spoken. If he had called David a Statesman or Orator, that would have been more proper. But to call him a naturalist was like calling him Johnny Appleseed.

What would have led La Pena, certainly an educated and proper officer to mislabel one of Americas shining sons as a flower picking Dandy?

[loucapitano]

Good question silverwolf. Maybe it lost or gained something in the translation. Leave it to the Spanish language experts, of which this site has many to offer an opinion. That term "naturalist" was the first thing that jumped out when reading De La Pena. It's one of a number of areas of dispute that this column has frequently discussed.
Take a look at the ASF archives and past issues of the Alamo Journal.
Lou from Long Island

[Rich Curilla]

Because of its use in context, I have always just assumed (perhaps dangerously) that it was de la Pena's term (whatever the translation) that basically meant "person of nature," their way of referring to a frontiersman or country boy. Never for a moment thought anybody meant botanist, although the thought crossed my mind. Meanings and implecations change with changing eras. Today, somebody might think he meant nudist. LOL.

[Rich Curilla]

Hmmmm. The New World Dictionary definition of "naturalist" in English (never mind Spanish translation) is, "a person who studies nature, esp. by direct observation of animals and plants." If that isn't Davy Crockett to a T, I don't know what is.

[mjbrathwaite]

The term "naturalist" has always bothered me to the point that I've often wondered if there was such a person taking refuge at the Alamo and that he was mistaken for Crockett, although I'm aware there is no evidence for that.

[TRK]

The term in the DLP manuscript is "naturalista." Look at 19th-century Spanish dictionaries and you'll see, the word meant simply "naturalist," nothing more.

[Rich Curilla]

Americans are so super-saturated with the term "frontiersman" from long years of TV, folklore and James Fenimore Cooper. We must realize that Mexico had their own view of this group of people. We have called them frontiersmen because of our historic understanding of their "pushing the frontier" and being on the edge of civilization. In distant Mexico, without our expansionist focus, people may have simply thought of folks like Crockett as men who communed with nature. I'm sure that, if any of the Crockett legend got down there, it would have been bear hunting and raccoon grinning -- and his hunting stories from his autobiography while in Congress.

[Allen Wiener]

I think you're on the right track, Rich. My guess is that whatever DLP knew about Crockett he got from newspapers and word of mouth. Maybe he got it from Almonte, who was once quoted in the newspapers as calling Crockett a "lunatic politician." By the time DLP heard about Crockett, the man had already gotten obscured by the legend and myth. Notice DLP didn't say "the 3-term U.S. congressman."

[sloanrodgers]

I don't believe the term frontiersman gained wide use until the 1850s when the west became more settled. Why would some people single out others as fronitersmen
when so many lived on the frontier? Naturalist was a more popular word in the 19th Century and descriptive of Crockett's love of nature.

[Rich Curilla]

I kinda thought the same thing. The only thing I'd like to know (and am too lazy to go to the library) is if James Fenimore Cooper had anything in his 18th. century books that might be revealing as to the term.

I'm this moment remembering that Stephen F. Austin referred to the breed (including Bowie and Houston) as "leather stockings," which did indeed come from Cooper. His stories (including "Last of the Mohicans") were generally referred to then as "leather stocking tales."

[sloanrodgers]

Jim Cooper usually called his naturalist characters: woods men or frontier men, but rarely frontiersmen. It's not a big leap though. Of course you know his most famous creation was called
Leather Stockings among other things. I'm not a student of frontier apparel, but I believe some folks wore what they called leather breeches back then and the romantic author coined the
term Leather Stockings, which became more popular. I wouldn't trust a guy named Breeches.

[stuart]

True, but "old Leather Britches" sounds better than Natty Bumpo

[sloanrodgers]

Leather Britches was certainly another spelling, but sounds too much like a Dominatrix for Natty.

[stuart]

There's also a question of perspective here. To Americans pushing westwards the frontier was exactly that, it was the hazy edge of civilisation. To the Mexicans, already out there...

Now OK they had rancheros who were similarly living on the fringes but it was a different culture and I think the point here is that "Frontiersman" is not necessarily a concept that translated easily into a Mexican idiom, hence the naturalista

[Hiram]

"Frontiersman" translates rather easily into Spanish as "Fronterizo." Just as Crockett was mislabeled as a politician bringing dispatches from the government, he was also mislabeled a naturalist. I honestly believe the Mexicans had little comprehension as to who Crockett was or what made him so famous among Americans during his lifetime. The very idea that such a person could arise through an essentially republican system was (pardon the expression) a foreign concept to the educated classes of Mexico.