IXL | Davy Crockett | 2nd grade social studies

Listen and read along with the passage about Davy Crockett.

A painting of Davy Crockett on the frontier

Davy Crockett was born in Tennessee in 1796. His family were settlers. A settler is a person who moves to a new place to start a new community.

Many settlers from the United States moved to Tennessee. Settlers went to Tennessee because its land was cheap and good for farming. At that time, Tennessee was called a frontier. The frontier was far away from cities and towns, so people had to do things for themselves. People hunted and grew their own food. They cut down trees to build their own homes.

When Davy was growing up, his family was poor. He only went to school for a short time. Instead, he spent much of his time farming and hunting. He was a skilled hunter and a good farmer. When he was just twelve years old, he got a job bringing cows from Tennessee to a farm in Virginia. The trip was hundreds of miles, but he kept the cows safe the whole way.

When the settlers came to the frontier, Native American people already lived there. The settlers wanted land from the Native Americans. But Native American people did not want to give up their land. So, the two sides fought each other near Tennessee. Davy Crockett helped the settlers fight the war. The United States won, and settlers took a lot of Native American land.

After the war, Davy Crockett got a job as a leader in Tennessee's government. Many settlers liked having him as a leader. Crockett was a settler just like them. He knew how hard their lives could be, and he wanted to make things better. Later, he got a job in the United States Congress. Congress is a group of people in government who make laws for the whole country. In Congress, Crockett wanted to make laws that helped settlers on the frontier.